'    OLD    ' 

SEAPORT 

TOWNS 

OF     THE 

SOUTH 

MILDR-ED    CI^AM 

DRAWINGS   BY 

'  ALL'AN  G.  CRAM  " 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 


THE  COLLECTION  OF 
NORTH  CAROLINIANA 

ENDOWED  BY 

JOHN  SPRUNT  HILL 
CLASS  OF  1889 


C971.65 

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UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00032745977 

FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
THE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


Form  No.  A-368 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS  OF  THE  SOUTH 


Old  Seaport  Towns 
of  the  South 

By      , 

Mildred  Cram 


Drawings  by 

Allan  G.  Cram 


New  York 
Dodd,  Mead  t$  Company 


Copyright,  1917. 
By  Uodd,  Mead  and  Company,  Inc. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     Introducing — Ourselves,  and  the  Scope 

of  the  Work i 

II.  Lady  Baltimore  in  a  Mackintosh,  Some- 
thing about  Annapolis  and  a  Great 
Deal  about  Rain 12 

III.  Which  Contains  a  Trolley  Trip  and  a 

Laundry  Grievance 43 

IV.  On  to  Wilmington,  a  Wreck,  and  a  Lit- 

tle Dissertation  on  Pullman   Cars     72 

V.  Palms  and  Spanish  Moss  at  Last,  and 
We  Make  Our  Bow  to  Aristocratic 
Madame  Charleston 99 

VI.    A  Confession  of  Laziness  in  Savannah 

and  a  Step  Further  South  to  "Jax"  132 

VII.    An  Afternoon  in  Old  St.  Augustine  and 

a  Chronicle  of  Tire  Trouble  .       .158 

VIII.    Tampa,  Spaniards  and  the  Greek  Sponge 

Fleet  at  Tampa 193 

IX.  'Way  Down  in  Pensacola,  Seaplanes, 
Submarines,  and  Lunch  with  an  Ad- 
miral, with  a  Storm  as  an  Anti- 
climax       .      .  223 

[v] 


ri 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

X.  A  Day  in  Mobile  and  On  to  New  Or- 
leans Where  We  Meet  a  Very  Ca- 
pable Young  Woman 257 

XI.  Creoles,  Pralines  and  a  Little  History  289 

XII.  Galveston,  the  Optimist 318 

XIII.  Key  West  at  Dawn 332 

XIV.  Wind,  Waves  and  Home  Again  .      .      .  353 


[vi] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

A   Mirage  of  the   Mediterranean   in   Florida 

Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

I    Held    an   Umbrella  Over  Allan   While   He 
Sketched  the  Big  Transport  "Grekland"    .        26 

The  One-  and  Two-storied  Houses  Reminded 
UsofClovelly 36 

A  Cluster  of  Small  Sailing  Boats  and  Dories     .       40 

The  Ferry  Slip  at  Norfolk 50 

The  Navy  Yard  Gate,  Portsmouth  ....       56 

It  Was  Still  Very  Early  When  the  Ferry  Drew 
Away  from  Norfolk 74 

Long  Hours  of  Lazy  Contemplation      .      .      .      100 

Charleston   Is  Caught  Into  a  Dream  of  the 
Romantic  Past no 

The    Beautiful    South    Portal   of   St.    Philip's 
Church 118 

The  Severity  of  the  Pillared  Portico  is  Relieved 

by  Delicate  Wrought  Iron  Railings      .      .      .      128 

Great  Ships  Come  Eighteen  Miles  from  the  Sea 
to  Savannah's  Front  Door  Step      ....      140 

A  Magnificent  Avenue  of  Live  Oaks     .      .      .      148 
[vii] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACINO 
PAGK 


The  Spaniards  Called  Their  Fort  the  Castle 
San  Marco 166 

We  Could  Chat  Comfortably  with  the  Captain 
without  Stirring  from  Our  Garden  Bench     .      198 

The  Hotel  and  Its  Gardens  were  Alluring     .     210 

The  Greeks  Had  Said  Their  Prayers  and  Were 
at  Work  Again 220 

A  Great  Floating  Hangar,  Truly  Magnificent 
in  Proportion 240 

Ships  from  the  Mexican  Gulf  and  the  Carib- 
bean    266 

You  Remember  Jim  Bludso,  Don't  You?     I'll 
Show  You  His  World 284 

This  is  the  Real  New  Orleans! 292 

Stuccoed  Brick  Walls,  Arcades  and  Cool  Inner 
Courts 300 

A  Grain^Elevator,  as  Grim  and  Sombre  as  a 
Mediaeval  Fortress 326 

Dolphins  Cavorted  at  Sunset,  Turning  Beauti- 
ful Somersaults 336 

The  Boisterous  Wind  Rattled  the  Cocoa  Palms     348 


[viH] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS  OF  THE  SOUTH 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 
OF  THE  SOUTH 


CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCING — OURSELVES,    AND   THE   SCOPE   OF 
THE  WORK 


HILE  our  taxi  hung  a  moment  on 
the  edge  of  Broadway  we  peered 
through  the  rain-spangled  windows 
and  sighed,  like  true  provincial  New 
Yorkers,  because  we  were  leaving  our  city. 
Broadway  cut  north  and  south  like  a  rainbow. 
Electric  signs  dripped  in  liquid  sheets  or  burst 
into  fiery  spray.  High  on  the  housetops  huge 
figures  trod  the  darkness  for  an  instant  and 
disappeared.  Lights  blinked,  glittered,  ex- 
ploded in  multi-coloured  pinwheels,  ran  up  and 
down  and  dizzily  around,  shot  into  the  sky, 
fell  in  a  shower  of  prismatic  sparks.  .  .  .  We 
sighed,  for  we  were  leaving  New  York,  and  it 
still  had  its  octopus  arms  around  us. 

Our  taxi  pranced  a  little  like  an  impatient 
[  i  ] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

carriage  Horse,  the  traffic  policeman  signalled 
and  the  city  streamed  past  again.  It  was  like 
being  in  a  fast  undersea  boat  rushing  along 
the  bottom  of  a  luminous  ocean.  The  driver 
manoeuvred  a  wide  curve  at  top  speed  and 
brought  us  up  to  the  Pennsylvania  Station  with 
a  flourish  just  where  a  red-capped  porter  an- 
gled on  the  edge  of  the  curb  for  passengers  with 
suitcases. 

But  it  wasn't  until  we  were  caught  in  the 
pie-shaped  wedge  of  travellers  at  the  ticket  gate 
that  we  realised  how  irrevocable  our  going 
away  was.  And  then  we  had  a  chilling  sensa- 
tion of  exile,  as  if  we  were  leaving  all  the  things 
we  liked  best — friends,  fun,  work,  New  York — 
and  were  not  going  to  find  anything  to  take 
their  place.  That  is  the  worst  of  being  a  New 
Yorker;  like  a  breathless  joy-rider  in  a  scenic 
railway  car,  you  shut  your  eyes  and  shriek,  "Oh, 
isn't  it  fun!  There's  nothing  like  it  in  the 
world!"  Forgetting  that  beyond  the  wall  of 
glittering  towers,  across  the  moat  of  rivers,  there 
are  cities  and  people,  great  activities  and  amaz- 
ing beauty.  Not  only  the  ashes  of  cities  and 
people,  but  the  living  heart  of  them,  the  "rest 
of  America." 

Waiting  for  the  six  o'clock  train  to  Balti- 
more, we  felt  a  little  unsteady,  as  if  the  violent 
[*  J 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

motion  of  our  familiar  world  had  ceased.    We 
felt,  to  tell  the  truth,  like  sailors  ashore. 

We  were  going  to  our  native  South  which 
we  left  before  memory  began,  and  which  had 
come  to  mean,  through  parental  reminiscences, 
a  place  of  sun,  chivalry,  romance  and  Uncle 
Remus.  Somewhere  in  our  obscure  conscious- 
ness, not  altogether  wiped  out  by  a  New  Eng- 
land childhood,  a  European  youth,  and  a  New 
York  maturity,  we  bear  the  impress  of  a  South- 
ern ancestry — Catholics  who  came  to  America 
with  Lord  Baltimore,  and  thanks  to  a  king  and 
queen  who  were  recklessly  generous  with  Mary- 
land, settled  themselves  in  what  is  now  a  whole 
county.  Besides  bequeathing  to  us  a  love  of 
dark  churches  and  incense,  a  taste  for  hot- 
breads  and  an  incurably  romantic  turn  of  mind, 
they  left  nothing  to  posterity  but  their  freed 
slaves  who  proudly  bore  and  still  flaunt  the  fam- 
ily name.  We  are  always  running  across  dusky 
"relatives,"  even  as  far  north  as  New  York. 

"Lo'd,  chile,"  a  cook  of  ours  once  said  to  me, 
"was  yo'  maw's  name  the  same  as  mine?  Why, 
gracious  goodness,  Miss  Mildred,  we-all's  the 
same  family!" 

It  was  almost  more  than  I  could  bear,  for 
she  was  as  black  as  the  ace  of  spades,  as  black 
as  a  bottle  of  ink,  as  black  as  soot.     But  she 
[  3] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

fortunately  explained,  as  she  stirred  the  corn- 
bread  batter,  "My  great  gran'paw  was  yo'  gran'- 
paw's  body  servant."  And  you  can  imagine 
how  gratifying  it  was  to  hear  that  my  great 
grandpa  was  such  a  howling  dude!  Afterwards 
I  used  the  bit  of  information  to  overawe  the 
cook,  just  as  I  can  twist  any  Irish  maid  around 
my  finger  by  informing  her  with  an  exalted  and 
fanatic  gleam  in  my  eyes  that  I  was  blessed  by 
Pius  X  and  kissed  the  hand  of  Pope  Benedict 
when  he  was  a  Cardinal.  That  and  a  piece  of 
lucky  coral  from  Naples  (for  use  on  Italians) 
work  wonders  in  settling  domestic  problems, 
and  domestics.  While  I  thought  about  my 
Southern  ancestors  and  wondered  whether  they 
would  help  me  to  love  the  South,  the  ticket  gate 
opened  and  we  squeezed  through  to  our  train. 
"New  York,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore."  As 
Hewlett  would  say,  "God,  what  a  traverse!" 

The  way  to  Baltimore  lies  across  flat  coun- 
try. After  the  train  plunges  under  the  river, 
where  certain  sensitive  travellers  stop  up  their 
ears  as  if  they  were  in  the  Simplon,  it  goes  hand 
in  hand  with  suburban  "locals"  for  miles  be- 
fore it  can  make  up  its  mind  to  start  off  alone 
to  Philadelphia.  From  your  Pullman,  where 
you  lounge  with  the  hatless,  permanent  languor 
which  means  "I  am  an  adventurer;  I  am  going 
[4  ] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

far,"  you  can  look  into  the  brilliantly  lighted, 
crowded  suburban  trains  and  pity  the  rows  of 
tired  business  men  screened   by  pink  evening 
papers.    But  there  is  nothing  spectacular  about 
the  scenery.     Even  when  we  pressed  our  noses 
against  the  rain-spattered  windows  and  stared 
out,  we  could  see  nothing  but  long  strings  of 
electric  lights  linking  town  to  town.     It  was 
more  fun  to  lean  back  in  our  chairs  and  stare 
at  the  people  in  the  car.     Most  of  them  were 
school   children   returning  to  school   after  the 
Christmas  holidays,  the  girls  full  of  funny  lit- 
tle affectations,  the  boys  steeped  in  a  perfectly 
transparent   and   artificial   melancholy.     They 
were  having  such  a  good  time,  each  with  his 
soul-satisfying    egoism!     Watching   them,    we 
were  envious  a  little,  and  then  we  began  to  see 
how  funny  they  were   and   didn't  want  their 
youth  but  simply  blessed  them  for  it.    And  our 
thoughts  turned  to  the  South  again. 

"I  am  going  there  with  my  mind  as  blank  as 
a  wax-coated  phonograph  record,"  I  thought, 
"ready  to  receive  the  myriad  impressions  that 
will  carve  little  hair-lines  all  over  my  receptive 
brain,  recording  colours  and  voices,  the  smell 
of  the  sea,  the  drift  of  clouds  and  the  sun  on  a 
garden  wall.  Perhaps,  when  they  put  me  be- 
tween the  covers  of  a  book,  I  shall  sing!  After 
[5  ] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

all,"  I  went  on,  shutting  my  eyes,  "an  Italian 
wrote  the  best  book  of  American  travel  I  have 
ever  read.  He  saw  us  not  only  as  others  see  us, 
but  as  we  are.  That  was  because  he  didn't  un- 
derstand us  at  all.  Out  of  the  unfamiliar,  like 
a  magician  drawing  yards  of  ribbon  from  the 
crown  of  a  silk  hat,  he  evoked  the  picturesque. 
A  negro  was  as  strange  and  colourful  to  him 
as  an  East  Indian,  and  a  Cherokee  burial 
mound  was  as  suggestive  as  an  Etruscan  tomb. 
If  he  didn't  like  something  about  us,  he  trod 
gaily  on  our  toes.  If  he  thought  Brownsville, 
Idaho,  an  ugly,  dirty,  sun-baked  wilderness,  he 
said  so  because  by  no  possible  chance  did  his 
mother's  third  cousin  live  there.  On  one  page 
he  treated  us  with  devastating  ridicule  and  on 
the  next  he  took  us  to  his  heart  for  something 
we  are  ashamed  of.  .  .  .  Out  of  the  whole 
here  emerged  a  composite  American,  energetic, 
inventive  and  provincial,  with  a  voice  like  a 
rasp  and  a  sentimental  interior,  taciturn  about 
everything  except  business,  turning  his  back  on 
sunsets  and  dawns  to  read  a  newspaper,  the 
builder  of  a  new  world,  of  all  the  men  on  earth 
the  only  one  who  is  engaged  in  creating  a  civi- 
lisation. After  all,  an  epic  hero  in  ill-fitting 
clothes,  Ulysses  in  peg-tops  and  stub-toed 
boots." 

[6] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

I  opened  my  eyes  again  and  rubbed  the 
blurred  windows  to  look  out.  The  train  was 
rushing  across  a  dark  plain.  All  I  could  see 
was  a  smudge  of  black  smoke  full  of  rocketing 
sparks;  and  my  mind  turned  to  our  trip  again. 
.  .  .  We  were  going  to  travel  fast,  by  train  and 
by  boat,  all  the  way  down  the  South  Atlantic 
Coast,  around  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  Galves- 
ton. We  were  going  to  see  the  myriad  activi- 
ties of  nineteen  seaports.  I  wondered  whether 
it  would  be  possible  to  follow  the  advice  of  the 
up-to-date  slogan,  "Keep  your  eye  on  the 
South!"  It  was,  after  all,  a  fairly  large  slice 
of  the  world  to  focus  on.  There  is  the  old 
South  and  the  new,  as  different  as  night  and 
day.  One  is  a  place  of  gardens  and  sunshine, 
golden  jessamine  and  honeysuckle,  and  the 
melancholy  beauty  of  dignified  decay.  The 
other  is  a  place  of  factories  and  harbours,  active, 
vigorous  and  purposeful.  "Keep  your  eye  on 
the  South!"     I  would  try. 

"The  spectacle  of  force,"  I  thought,  "is  with- 
in our  optic  capabilities,  but  a  true  conception 
of  force  comes  through  a  more  complicated 
sensible  faculty.  The  might  of  machinery,  the 
movement  of  railways  and  ships,  digging  down 
in  the  earth  and  building  up  in  the  sky  are  all 
manifestations  of  material  force — majestic,  su- 
C  7  ] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

perb,  visible  manifestations  of  that  hidden  inner 
force  which  is  the  imperishable  urge  of  the 
living  spirit  to  creation.  The  force  of  a  single 
spirit  is  as  great  as  the  force  of  the  whole  uni- 
verse. Behind  the  birth  and  growth  of  a  city,  the 
building  of  a  factory  or  a  railway,  the  dredg- 
ing of  a  harbour,  there  are  countless  human 
dreams.  What  a  pity  that  the  immeasurable 
power  in  material  creation  cannot  be  turned 
partially  into  artistic  creation!  If  one-third  of 
the  energy  which  goes  into  modern  commercial 
achievement  could  be  applied  to  the  plastic, 
George  Moore  would  have  no  need  to  bewail 
the  death  of  art.  But  beauty  is,  after  all,  a  mat- 
ter of  individual  conception.  The  modern  artist 
is  surrounded  by  factories,  an  intricate  tangle  of 
railroad  tracks,  dry  docks,  furnaces,  kilns, 
gashes  in  the  face  of  the  earth,  warehouses, 
steel  shops,  iron  tubes,  steam,  straining  truck 
horses,  sweating  labourers,  grain  elevators  and 
whalebacks,  bridges,  trestles,  dredges,  the 
smooth-thrusting  piston  and  rod,  white-hot 
furnaces,  murky  tunnels,  crowds  dressed  all  alike 
in  sombre  clothes,  a  vast  and  immeasurable  con- 
centration of  millions  of  people  upon  material 
things. 

"Out  of  this,  life  as  it  is,  he  must  weave  an 
imaginative   fabric   of   his   own.     This   is   the 
[  8] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

source  of  his  inspiration,  the  most  suggestive, 
the  most  majestic,  the  surest  source  of  inspira- 
tion for  art  since  art  began.  Not  the  soft  hills 
and  the  pale  skies  of  Greece,  of  course;  not  the 
emotional,  ardent  life  of  the  Renaissance  at 
Florence;  not  the  poetry  of  old  England  or  the 
tenderness  of  old  France,  but  steel  and  fire  and 
swarming  labourers!  Who  could  watch  the 
godlike  activity  of  a  ship's  engine  room,  the 
graceful  Teachings  and  retreats,  the  smooth  pre- 
cision, the  leashed  virility  of  the  thrusting  steel 
rods,  without  being  sure  that  here  is  art?" 

This  thought  took  me  back  to  studios  in  New 
York  where  men  I  know  are  covering  canvases 
with  squares,  patches  and  whirligigs  in  imita- 
tion, they  say,  of  contemporary  life.  They  call 
themselves  modernists  and  say  that  life  to-day 
has  no  form.  Chaotic  colour,  a  shattering  of 
sounds — sensation!  And  they  splash  rainbows 
in  interpretation,  achieving  nothing  but  a  con- 
tortion of  past  art,  rehashing  El  Greco,  the 
Egyptians,  the  Etruscans  and  the  Byzantine. 
They  put  their  hands  over  their  eyes  and  groan 
when  you  speak  of  form. 

"The  world,"  they  say,  "is  chaotic — we  paint 

what  we  see."       Marinetti,  the  arch-priest  (or 

is  he  arch-fiend?)   of  modernism,  taught  them 

to  do  that.    And  yet,  to  focus  our  mind  myopic- 

f  9] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

ally,  the  whole  of  America  is  absorbed  in  one 
vast  struggle  for  power  and  still  more  power, 
bigness  and  still  more  bigness,  riches  and  still 
more  riches,  with  a  unity  of  purpose  which 
makes  the  building  of  the  Pyramids  look  like 
child's  play,  and  the  trade  of  Phoenicia  a  min- 
iature game  of  chess  with  ships  as  pawns.  If 
the  voyage  of  Ulysses  was  epic,  if  Hannibal's 
crossing  of  the  Alps  was  heroic,  if  the  activity 
of  Venice  was  inspiring,  if  mediaeval  Italy  was 
poetic,  then  America,  to-day,  is  all  of  these. 
When  Ghirlandaio  painted  his  Florentine  street 
scenes  across  the  chapel  wall  of  Santa  Maria 
Novella,  he  was  painting  a  homely  common- 
place. There  is  no  reason  why  Brangwyn's 
nude  workmen  should  not  some  day  take  on 
the  quality  of  aloofness,  the  allurement  of  the 
unfamiliar  which  make  Giovanna  and  Tito 
creatures  of  poetic  fancy. 

I  asked  Allan,  who  was  flattening  his  lovely 
nose  against  the  window,  if  he  didn't  agree  with 
me  that  longshoremen  are  as  picturesque  as  me- 
diaeval saints. 

"I'm  not  saying  they  aren't,"  he  answered, 
looking  bewildered.  He  had  been  thinking 
about  aeroplanes,  and  saints  took  him  a  little 
by  surprise. 

[10] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

"That  makes  me  think  of  a  story,"  I  said. 
"There  were  two  darkies  who  met  on  the  road. 
One  of  them  said  to  the  other,  'I  heah  you-all 
is  married,  Sam.' 

"  'Well,'  said  Sam,  scratching  his  head,  'I 
ain't  sayin'  I  ain't! 

"The  first  darkey  lost  his  temper.  T  ain't 
askin'  you  is  you  ain't,'  he  yelled.  'I'se  askin' 
you  ain't  you  is!'  " 

"There  is  a  better  one  than  that,"  Allan  said. 
"A  darkey  was  on  trial  for  shooting  at  another 
darkey. 

"  'Amos,'  said  the  judge  who  was  trying  the 
case,  'what  provocation  did  Moses  give  you  for 
attempting  to  kill  him?' 

"  'Jedge,'  said  Amos,  'what  would  you-all  do 
if  a  man  done  called  you  a  nappy-headed,  black 
houn'  and  a  damn  fool?' 

"  'Well,  Amos,'  said  the  judge,  'no  one  ever 
called  me  such  things.  I'm  not  a  hound,  nor 
am  I  a  nappy-headed  damn  fool.' 

"  'Well,  Jedge,'  cried  Amos  desperately, 
'what  would  you  do  if  you  was  called  jest 
whichever  kind  of  a  damn  fool  you  is!' " 

I  was  still  wondering  when  the  train  drew 
into  Baltimore  and  another  angling  red-cap 
landed  us  neatly  and  led  us,  like  a  magnet  lur- 
ing pins,  to  a  taxi-cab. 

[ii] 


CHAPTER  II 

LADY  BALTIMORE  IN  A  MACKINTOSH,  SOMETHING 

ABOUT  ANNAPOLIS  AND  A  GREAT  DEAL  ABOUT 

RAIN 


AM  afraid  that  this  chapter  will  be 
mostly  about  rain.  It  was  raining 
when  the  Baltimore  taxi,  a  very  live- 
ly taxi  indeed,  skidded  through  miles 
of  lovely  residential  streets  to  the  Hotel  Ren- 
nert.  It  was  still  raining  when  I  looked  out  of 
my  window  for  the  last  time  before  going  to 
bed.  And  I  could  see  nothing  of  Baltimore  ex- 
cept a  tall,  thin  office  building  illuminated,  like 
a  comic  opera  star,  by  a  cluster  of  searchlights. 
I  crawled  into  an  enormously  wide  bed  and  sank 
down  on  the  fat  pillows  with  a  groan  of  pleas- 
ure. I  was  tired;  I  hadn't  believed  that  leav- 
ing New  York  could  tire  me  so.  I  had  rather 
believed  that  going  away  just  as  things  got  tre- 
mendously interesting  might  act  as  a  rest-cure. 
Absurd  provincial!  The  rest  of  the  world,  so 
far,  had  been  just  as  exciting  as  my  own  fifty 
square  blocks  of  Gotham.    The  taxi  had  nosed 

[12] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

through  traffic  in  Baltimore  with  the  sickening 
speed  we  thought  we  had  left  behind  when  we 
dismissed  our  "black  and  white"  at  the  Penn- 
sylvania Station.  The  lobby  of  the  Rennert 
had  been  as  crowded  as  a  New  York  lobby; 
page  boys  wandered  up  and  down  singing 
"Mees-ttv  Brown,  M^j-ter  Krinsky,  Mees-ter 
Trum"  in  nasal  voices.  Negroes  with  nasal 
voices  where  I  had  expected  to  hear  Uncle  Re- 
mus cadences!  Other  page  boys  spun  the  re- 
volving doors  and  made  futile  grabs  for  the 
valises  of  departing  and  arriving  travelling 
salesmen.  New  York  again!  "Bother,"  I 
thought,  "this  isn't  the  South."  But  the  ele- 
vator was  lazy  and  the  little  cakes  of  soap  in 
the  bathroom  were  stamped  with  the  sure 
enough  name,  Baltimore — Baltimore! 

It  was  still  raining  in  staccato  patterings 
when  I  went  to  sleep.  And  I  was  lulled  further 
by  a  chorus  of  men's  voices,  coming  through  a 
radiator  from  some  dining-room  or  banquet  hall 
downstairs,  singing  "Good  night,  ladies"  in 
close  harmony.  It  must  have  been  a  boys' 
"frat"  party  (the  boys  aged  fifty-three  or  there- 
abouts), for  no  one  sings  "Good  night,  ladies" 
in  this  day  and  generation.  "Merrily  we  roll 
along,  roll  along,  roll  along,"  they  sang,  as  I 
sank  down  into  the  fat  pillows  and  closed  my 
[is] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

eyes,  "Merrily  we  roll  along,  o-o-o-ver  the  dark 
blue  seas.  .  .  ." 

It  was  still  raining  when  I  woke.  The  spot- 
light had  been  turned  off  and  the  giddy  office 
building  thrust  its  head  into  scudding  black 
clouds.  We  had  brought  all  sorts  of  things  to 
wear  in  warm  weather — Palm  Beach  suits  (to 
be  worn  under  overcoats!),  straw  hats  and  cool 
silks.  I  had  pictured  myself,  before  starting, 
in  what  the  railroad  posters  call  "sunny  climes," 
cavorting  on  white  beaches,  being  wheeled  about 
n  bicycle  chairs  under  palms  and  moss-draped 
oaks;  I  had  even  contemplated,  further  south, 
a  helmet  and  white  linen  sport  things.  B  A 
one  by  one,  all  the  way  to  Key  West,  I  shipped 
my  trunks  full  of  summer  finery  back  to  New 
York.  Packages  of  winter  flannels,  furs,  muf- 
flers and  felt  hats,  packed  in  a  frantic  hurry 
by  my  puzzled  family,  caught  up  with  me  at 
Norfolk,  Savannah,  Pensacola  and  New  Or- 
leans. It  was  an  extraordinary  winter,  they  say. 
But  then  it  always  is  extraordinary — disagree- 
ably so,  of  course — when  I  travel.  If  I  should 
go  to  Greenland,  the  mercury  would  climb  out 
of  the  top  of  the  thermometer.  Local  colour 
skips  before  me  like  an  elusive  flea,  so  that  when 
I  write  travel  articles  I  always  have  to  put  my- 
self down  as  a  liar  or  else  take  all  my  facts 

[14] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

from  the  penny  guide  books  and  trust  to  luck. 
The  South  may  be  warm,  and  it  may  possibly 
be  sunny,  but  if  I  let  either  word  creep  into 
this  book  you  will  know  that  I  was  writing 
through  the  top  of  my  hat  and  holding  the  ink- 
well up  my  sleeve.  It  rained  in  Baltimore;  I 
opened  my  eyes  to  a  sodden  and  soaked  Balti- 
more, I  left  a  sodden  and  soaked  Baltimore  a 
week  later.  Allan  and  I  introduced  ourselves 
to  the  Monument  City  by  starting  out  in  a  frigid 
drizzle  of  fine  rain  to  buy  rubbers.  The  boy  in 
charge  of  the  revolving  doors,  overjoyed  to 
have  something  conversational  to  do,  explained 
that  we  could  find  a  shoe  store  "one  block  to 
the  right  and  then  down,"  where  he  believed 
we  could  buy  a  right  good  pair  of  gums.  Then 
he  tucked  us  into  the  revolving  door  and  sent 
us  spinning  out  into  Baltimore. 

But  we  lost  ourselves  at  the  corner  and  had 
to  ask  directions  of  a  policeman  who  was  stand- 
ing under  an  umbrella  and  bawling  at  traffic 
from  behind  a  mud-guard,  as  secure  from  the 
splashings  of  passing  motors  as  a  lady  in  a 
limousine. 

"One  block  to  the  left  and  then  on,"  said  he, 
in  a  tone  so  languid  that  I  fancy  they  spoil  their 
policemen   in   Baltimore. 

After  all,  it  doesn't  matter  how  you  introduce 

[15] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

yourself  to  a  city.  You  may  make  elaborate 
preparations  to  have  the  meeting  propitious, 
and  then  find  that  you  have  shaken  hands  form- 
ally and  have  forgotten  to  look  into  the  city's 
eyes.  You  may  blindfold  yourself  and  have 
yourself  taken  to  the  top  of  the  tallest  build- 
ing, so  that  when  the  bandage  is  removed  you 
will  be  struck  dumb  with  amazement  and  sur- 
prise. Or  you  may  walk  around  the  corner  on 
a  rainy  day  and  run  bang  into  the  city  wearing 
her  prettiest  gown  and  smiling  her  most  cordial 
smile.  And  she  may,  just  because  you  look 
bedraggled  and  forlorn,  ask  you  to  tea.  For 
cities  are  like  people — they  are  at  their  best 
when  you  expect  the  least  of  them. 

Baltimore  was  beautiful  in  the  rain,  and  buy- 
ing overshoes  was  as  good  as  any  other  way  to 
introduce  ourselves  to  her.  With  my  muddy 
shoes  on  the  knees  of  a  shoe  clerk  in  the  first 
shop  we  came  to,  I  learned  how  to  find  my  way 
about  the  city.  The  shoe  clerk  was  a  sort  of 
audible  civic  map  with  a  bump  of  locality  so 
highly  developed  that,  like  a  homing  pigeon, 
he  could  have  been  blindfolded  in  Baltimore, 
led  to  Hong  Kong  and  started  back  again  with 
nothing  but  a  pocket  compass  and  a  pen-knife. 
He  explained  Baltimore  while  he  fitted  enor- 
mous rubbers  on  my  not  so  enormous  shoes. 
[16] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

Charles  Street  runs  north  and  south,  Baltimore 
Street  runs  east  and  west,  and  from  them  the 
other  streets  are  numbered  east  and  west,  north 
and  south,  on  a  very  orderly  plan  that  holds 
good  everywhere  except  in  the  centre  of  the 
city,  where  there  is  a  hopeless  confusion  of  di- 
rections and  intentions  and  a  perfect  maelstrom 
of  ways.  Even  the  shoe  clerk  became  slightly 
confused  when  he  tried  to  explain  the  shop- 
ping district.  You  are  likely  to  go  'round  and 
'round  the  same  block  like  a  child  starting  out 
to  stick  a  paper  tail  on  a  paper  donkey  and 
sticking  it,  instead,  on  the  piano  stool.  Before 
you  can  get  your  sense  of  direction  in  hand  and 
start  off  confidently  east  or  west,  north  or  south, 
you  behave  as  I  did  when  I  first  went  to  Lon- 
don and  circled  Piccadilly  four  times  before 
I  could  determine  on  Regent  Street. 

To  be  sure  that  he  had  made  it  explicit,  the 
shoe  clerk  went  with  us  to  the  shop  door  and 
did  the  whole  thing  over  again,  in  pantomime, 
on  the  sidewalk. 

"Now  remember,  Charles  Street  runs  north 
and  south,  Baltimore  east  and  west." 

"All  that  for  two  pairs  of  gums,"  I  said  to 
Allan,  as  we  splashed  off  hopefully. 

"You  are  in  the  South,"  Allan  answered. 

Of  course  we  were.    I  had  forgotten,  because 
[17] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

no  one  had  said  "cy-ah"  for  car  and  no  one  had 
said  "I  reckon"  for  "I  guess,"  and  no  one  had 
called  Allan  "Colonel"  and  the  negroes  had  sail 
"Sure"  instead  of  "Yessah."  The  South?  Well, 
perhaps,  but  not  the  South  I  had  been  led  to 
expect.  We  set  out  to  look  for  the  Charles- 
Baltimore  axis  so  that  we  could  revolve  on  it 
with  the  familiarity  of  old  residents.  In  our 
pursuit  we  crossed  both  of  the  streets  a  dozen 
times,  but  we  never  did  find  out  where  they 
crossed  each  other.  Still,  one  chimera  is  as 
good  as  another,  and  we  saw  Baltimore  while 
we  were  playing  hide-and-seek  with  this  one. 
The  city  seemed  to  me  a  little  like  Genoa,  sub- 
stantial, rich,  massive  architecturally,  with  its 
feet  in  the  water  and  its  head  in  the  clouds, 
pompous,  very  orderly  and  always  flavoured 
with  the  heady  smell  of  wharves  and  ships. 
Like  Genoa,  it  spills  steeply  down-hill  to  the 
harbour.  And  the  business  streets,  where  dig- 
nified merchants  rub  elbows  with  sea  captains, 
stevedores  and  sailors,  are  only  a  block  or  two 
away  from  the  wharves.  And  yet  Baltimore 
had  a  narrow  escape  from  being  an  inland  city. 
It  is  over  two  hundred  miles  from  the  Atlantic 
Ocean,  and  only  the  obliging  width  and  depth 
of  Chesapeake  Bay  make  it  possible  for  Balti- 
more to  call  herself  a  great  seaport.     Big  ships 

[18] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

and  little  ships,  any  sort  of  ships  at  all,  sail  up 
the  broad  Chesapeake,  through  Patapsco  Bay  to 
the  very  front  door  of  the  city.  Some  of  them 
anchor  within  sight  of  the  domed  tower  of  the 
City  Hall  and  the  Post  Office  campanile,  so 
close  to  the  heart  of  the  city  that  ships'  bells 
can  be  set  by  the  B.  &  O.  clock. 

While  I  should  have  hunted  up  the  Board  of 
Trade  to  find  out  all  I  could  about  exports  and 
imports  and  how  many  million  dollars'  worth 
of  business  floats  up  and  down  Chesapeake  Bay 
in  a  year,  I  played  truant  and  went  with  Allan 
to  the  water-front.  It  was  more  fun  to  splash 
up  and  down  the  docks  than  to  collect  statistics, 
percentages,  estimates,  pamphlets,  prophecies 
and  Board  of  Trade  superlatives.  I  could  see 
for  myself  that  Baltimore  is  rich,  important  and 
powerful,  and  that  her  municipal  wharves  en- 
tertain the  biggest  and  the  littlest  ships  that  float. 
I  could  see  for  myself  what  the  magnificent 
future,  "after  the  war,"  holds  for  Baltimore  in 
the  way  of  great  and  greater  commercial  power. 
All  the  ravings  of  her  inspired  presc  agents, 
and  she  has  many,  every  citizen  from  the  oldest 
living  inhabitant  to  the  youngest  pickaninny 
combining  to  blow  the  civic  horn,  could  not 
have  added  to  my  admiration.  So  if  you  ex- 
pect to  find  out  how  many  tins  of  canned  oysters 
[19] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

are  shipped  in  a  week  from  Baltimore  to  oyster- 
less  Middle  West  cities,  you  need  not  turn  an- 
other page.  I  know  that  Baltimore  is  rich  and 
successful,  but  she  is  also  aristocratic  and  she 
resents  the  shoutings  of  her  voluntary  press 
agents.  She  has  always  lived  in  fine  houses, 
she  has  always  worn  rich  silks  and  rare  laces; 
it  is  in  her  blood  to  entertain  beautifully  and 
lavishly  and  to  be  gracious,  proud  and  incon- 
spicuous. Baltimore  is  the  impeccable  matron 
of  American  cities,  and  I  am  not  sure  which  of 
the  two,  Baltimore  or  her  distinguished  grand- 
mother, Charleston,  is  the  most  perfect  example 
of  American  aristocracy.  And  to  go  on  with 
the  allegory — Boston  is  Charleston's  unmarried, 
middle-aged  daughter,  a  trifle  more  austere  than 
her  married  sister,  Baltimore,  opinionated, 
scrupulous,  intelligent  and  dowdy.  New  York 
is  a  free-lance  person  of  whom  none  of  them 
approve,  but  they  steal  away  to  visit  her  now 
and  then,  to  smoke  one  of  her  cigarettes,  sip  at 
one  of  her  cocktails  and  admire  her  gowns.  St. 
Louis.  St.  Paul,  Detroit,  Jacksonville  and  Chi- 
cago are  all  "young  things";  they  haven't  de- 
cided whether  to  take  after  Baltimore  or  Bos- 
ton, or  to  follow  in  the  unholy  footsteps  of  the 
wicked  and  fascinating  and  altogether  too  gay 
New  York.     In  the  meantime,  they  wear  very 

[20] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

short  skirts  and  are  openly  proud  of  being  rich; 
they  drive  fast  automobiles,  and  dance  and  talk 
at  the  top  of  their  voices  and  spend  a  great  deal 
of  money. 

I  wouldn't  dream  of  talking  about  Balti- 
more's bank  account.  It  has  been  accumulating 
during  two  hundred  years  of  peace  and  pros- 
perity. Even  since  the  Barons  of  Baltimore, 
those  likable  Irishmen  from  County  Longford, 
established  the  town,  its  lucky  star  has  burned 
unfalteringly.  Baltimore  seemed  to  have  been 
blest  with  a  happy  destiny.  It  was  not  attacked 
during  the  Revolutionary  War,  all  of  the  fight- 
ing being  done  with  sticks  and  stones  and  the 
vituperative  tongues  of  its  mob  leaders.  Dur- 
ing the  War  of  1812,  although  England  attacked 
by  land  and  sea,  Baltimore  slapped  the  enemy 
so  soundly  that  he  never  returned  to  offer  the 
other  cheek.  Francis  Scott  Key  was  so  elated 
by  the  American  victory  that  he  wrote  "The 
Star-Spangled  Banner"  in  celebration  of  the 
tattered  flag  that  still  floated  above  Fort  Mc- 
Henry  after  an  all-night  bombardment  by  the 
British.  Hats  off  to  Key,  who  could  rhyme  in 
the  midst  of  battle,  but  why,  oh,  why  are  his 
verses  so  hard  to  remember  and  so  horribly 
hard  to  sing?  "What  so  prou-oudly  we  hay-il" 
[21] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

is  one  of  the  poetic  jaw-breakers  that  make  na- 
tional anthems  sore  trials. 

Baltimore  recovered  from  the  War  of  1812 
with  the  short  convalescence  of  the  victorious. 
And  during  the  Civil  War,  while  the  people 
of  Baltimore  were  torn  between  North  and 
South,  the  city  itself  was  outside  the  war  zone 
and  did  not  share  in  the  Southern  tragedy  of 
destruction  and  financial  ruin.  It  was  not  until 
11904  that  the  lucky  star  blinked  out  for  a  mo- 
ment and  a  voracious  and  implacable  fire  de- 
stroyed over  a  thousand  buildings  in  the  com- 
mercial part  of  the  city.  I  am  awfully  tempted 
to  say  something  about  that  famous  phoenix 
which  has  risen,  in  literature,  so  many  millions 
of  times  from  the  ashes.  But  this  is  what  really 
happened.  Baltimore  looked  at  the  smoulder- 
ing ruins  of  herself,  said,  "Oh,  bother!"  and 
put  on  a  new  dress.  Where  the  rows  and  rows 
of  red  brick  houses  and  red  brick  warehouses 
and  red  brick  office  buildings  had  been,  an  im- 
pressive stone  and  granite  district  appeared 
miraculously.  The  lucky  star  came  out  from 
behind  the  obscuring  cloud  and  has  been  shin- 
ing ever  since. 

The  rest  of  Baltimore's  history  seems  to  be  a 
recital  of  achievements,  as  if  the  inhabitants 
had  had  an  overwhelming  ambition  to  be  first  in 

[22] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

war,  first  in  peace,  and  first  in  everything  else : 
the  first  gas  company,  the  first  railroad,  the 
first  locomotive,  the  first  balloon  ascension,  the 
first  telegraph  message,  the  first  electric  railway. 
One  has  a  mental  picture  of  the  whole  popu- 
lation absorbed  in  invention.  It  is  even  dan- 
gerous to  launch  a  bon  mot  without  taking  out 
a  patent.  Everything  clever  and  modern  and 
indispensable  seems  to  have  originated  in  Bal- 
timore. But  if  you  should  ask  a  Baltimorean 
what  his  city's  chief  source  of  fame  is,  he  will 
probably  answer  "Whiskey"  or  "Beautiful  wo- 
men," or,  if  he  is  blind  to  the  other  two  virtues, 
"Monuments."  And  if  he  happens  to  be  a 
gourmet,  he  will  shut  his  eyes  and  answer, 
"Chicken  a  la  Maryland  and  oysters."  Balti- 
more is  that  sort  of  city;  you  love  her  for  her 
infinite  variety. 

I  loved  her  for  her  dignity  and  because  at 
the  end  of  her  teeming  business  streets  there  is 
always  a  glimpse  of  tangled  masts  and  spars 
and  slanting  funnels.  Time  that  should  have 
been  given  to  Walter's  Art  Museum,  to  Millet 
and  Meissonier  and  Rosa  Bonheur,  I  gave  to 
the  water-front  streets  and  to  staring  into  the 
dusty  windows  of  ship  chandlers'  shops  at  an- 
chors and  chains,  gasolene  motors,  tarred  rope, 
compasses   and   rubber  boots.      Hours   that   I 

[23] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

should  have  given  to  the  modern  frescoes  by 
Blashfield,  Turner  and  La  Farge  in  the  Court 
House  I  gave  to  the  fish  market.  I  was  not  as 
mad,  perhaps,  as  I  seemed  to  be,  for  the  fish 
market  was  a  place  of  striking  beauty.  There 
were  heaps  and  mounds  of  silver  fish,  irides- 
cent, white-bellied,  glistening;  the  market  floor 
was  wet  and  shiny,  the  high-arched  roof  was 
full  of  shadows,  and  everywhere,  in  groups  of 
two  and  three,  buyers  and  sellers  bargained 
over  the  dead  fish,  lifting  them  up,  tossing 
them  back  again  so  that  there  were  silver  flashes 
from  hand  to  hand. 

When  Allan  and  I  were  children  we  were 
never  in  doubt  as  to  what  wTe  were  "going  to 
be"  when  we  grew  up.  We  were  sailors  from 
the  time  we  were  old  enough  to  know  the  dif- 
ference between  a  ship  and  a  cradle.  We  sailed 
around  the  world  three  times  before  we  were 
nine — in  the  dining-room  table  turned  upside 
down.  Even  in  those  nursery  days  we  had  a 
Conradian  taste  for  sandy  shoals  and  deep  jun- 
gles, although  where  we  could  have  formed  the 
taste  is  a  mystery,  unless  it  came  to  us  through 
hereditary  memory.  When  we  were  nearer 
twelve  we  really  sailed  down  the  sea,  not  in  the 
dining-room  table  but  in  a  dory  rigged  some- 
how with  a  top-heavy  sail  made  of  a  linen  sheet. 

[24] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

We  had  all  of  Buzzard's  Bay  as  our  ocean,  and 
sailed  so  far  out  into  it  in  our  absurd  cockle- 
shell that  on  two  different  occasions  we  lost 
sight  of  land  altogether.  This  was  a  risky 
business  for  children,  but  it  was  glorious  fun, 
and  with  the  adventure,  the  wind,  the  salt  spray, 
the  nearness  and  adorable  fearfulness  of  the 
sea  we  were  dedicated  to  a  lifelong  worship. 
We  prance  at  the  very  sight  of  a  ship,  and  if 
we  could  afford  it  we  would  spend  our  live? 
making  'round-the-world  trips  in  tramp  steam- 
ers and  leisurely  sailing  vessels  bound  from 
New  York  to  Hong  Kong  and  return.  We  are 
happiest  when  we  are  leaning  on  a  ship's  rz'A 
In  some  blazing  hot  southern  port;  we  are  most 
ecstatic  when  we  are  aboard  a  steamer  outward 
bound,  when  crowded  life  drops  behind  the 
horizon  with  the  towers  and  pinnacles  of  New 
York  and  there  is  nothing  on  the  rim  of  the 
round,  round  world  but  clouds  and  the  long, 
black  streamers  of  smoke  rolling  back  from  the 
ship's  funnels. 

So  in  Baltimore  we  gravitated  naturally  to- 
ward Light  Street  and  the  Pratt  Street  wharves, 
not  only  because  the  town  slopes  that  way  and 
we  followed  the  line  of  least  resistance,  but  be- 
cause we  were  lured  that  way  by  the  smell  of 
the  sea.    The  produce  fleet  held  us  for  hours. 

[25] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

The  little  schooners  and  weather-beaten  ruggers 
come  to  town  at  the  crack  of  dawn,  bringing 
fruits  and  vegetables  or  staggering  under 
mounds  of  fresh  oysters,  and  we  liked  to  watch 
the  confusion  of  the  landing  and  unloading.  A 
swarm  of  hucksters  and  itinerant  dealers  ap- 
peared on  the  wharves,  and  there  was  always 
a  tangle  of  delivery  wagons  and  trucks  standing 
wheel  to  wheel  along  the  water-front.  We 
liked  to  follow  the  morning's  supplies  over  to 
the  Lexington  Market,  where  they  were  sorted 
and  arranged  to  catch  Lady  Baltimore's  eye 
when  she  did  her  shopping  later  in  the  morn- 
ing. 

The  famous  Baltimore  "clipper"  has  vanished 
from  the  seas  together  with  America's  suprem- 
acy in  fast  sailing  craft.  The  wide-winged, 
narrow  clippers  used  to  fly  from  port  to  port 
with  incredible  speed,  Yankee  ships  and  Yankee 
crews  writing  the  story  of  American  courage 
and  seamanship  in  big  letters  across  the  most 
romantic  page  in  maritime  history.  Ocean  lin- 
ers and  ungainly,  weather-beaten  transports  and 
tramps  have  taken  their  place.  We  saw  several 
Of  the  plucky  blockade-runners  at  Baltimore, 
some  of  them  emblazoned  with  huge  neutral 
Sags  for  the  information  of  U-boat  captains 
who  do  not  alwavs  respect  their  neutrality,  some 

[26] 


5  < 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

of  them  as  grim  and  sombre  and  businesslike 
as  battle  cruisers.  I  held  an  umbrella  over 
Allan,  like  an  attendant  slave,  while  he  sketched 
the  big  transport  Grekland.  The  ship  herself 
was  indifferent  to  our  homage  for  she  was  re- 
ceiving a  cargo  of  grain  for  some  hunger-pinch- 
ed European  nation,  but  the  swarm  of  painters 
who  were  covering  her  battered  plates  with 
checkerboard  squares  of  red,  craved  immortal- 
ity. They  caught  sight  of  Allan  and  shouted 
their  utter  willingness  to  pose  indefinitely. 

"Hey!    Put  me  in,  Mister!" 

"Hi,  you!     Don't  forget  me!" 

And  when  the  sketch  was  finished  they 
hoisted  themselves  up  to  the  Grekland's  deck, 
like  agile  monkeys  shinnying  up  a  stick,  and 
came  running  ashore  to  see  themselves  as 
"ithers"  saw  them.  Allan  had  to  make  a  dash 
for  it,  for  he  hadn't  put  the  painters  in  at  all, 
and  he  couldn't  have  told  them  that  they  "clut- 
tered up  the  composition."  If  he  had,  the 
painters  might  have  cluttered  up  the  artist,  the 
sketch  portfolio  and  the  attendant  slave.  So  we 
ran  at  top  speed  toward  Light  Street,  splatter- 
ing ourselves  with  the  mud  of  many  puddles. 

It  rained  and  it  rained.  Wherever  we  went 
we  advanced  under  that  dripping  umbrella, 
and  since  Allan  tops  me  by  a  foot,  I  caught  all 
[27] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

the  drippings  on  my  hat  brim,  whence  they 
seeped  down  my  coat  collar  and  into  my  shoes 
again;  my  skirts  were  soggy,  my  muff  looked 
like  an  immersed  Angora  kitten.  And  it  was 
cold!  But  for  one  thing  I  was  grateful — Bal- 
timore traffic  is  light.  We  dashed  from  side- 
walk to  sidewalk  only  to  find  that  the  nearest 
automobile  was  a  block  away,  while  the  traffic 
policemen  leaned  on  their  mud-guards  and 
shouted  with  laughter.  So  we  learned  our  les- 
son and  sauntered  sedately  in  front  of  street 
cars,  trusting  to  Southern  chivalry,  even  in  in- 
animate things,  to  save  us. 

The  streets  are  as  well-paved  as  the  promised 
golden  paths  of  Paradise,  and  laid  with  a  va- 
ried assortment  of  brick,  asphalt,  wood-block  and 
macadam.  Baltimore  thoroughfares  begin  with 
one  colour  and  end  with  another;  they  start  out 
paved  with  smooth  cobbles  and  wind  up  with 
an  artless  design  done  in  pink  brick.  The  re- 
sult rivals  the  famous  coat  of  the  Biblical  Jo- 
seph for  kaleidoscopic  variety,  and  makes  one 
wonder  whether  a  futurist  effect  in  tinted  as- 
phalt might  not  give  Fifth  Avenue  a  decided 
cachet! 

But  in  spite  of  its  frivolous  pav'ng  stones, 
Baltimore  is  always  discreet.  Even  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  city  there  is  more  or  less  dignity. 

[28] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

I  did  not  see  any  tenements  at  all,  only  rows  and 
rows  of  little  red  brick  houses,  each  with  its 
short  flight  of  white  steps  leading  to  the  front 
door.  And  I  discovered  that  the  middle-class 
women  of  Baltimore  spend  their  lives  in  a  futile 
effort  to  keep  those  eternal  rows  of  white  steps 
clean.  They  scrub  in  the  morning,  they  scrub 
in  the  afternoon,  they  are  still  scrubbing  when 
night  falls.  And  as  soon  as  the  steps  are  clean, 
the  dirty  boots  of  "mere  man"  tramp  over 
them  again.  If  I  were  a  Baltimore  housewife, 
I  would  buy  a  set  of  iron  doorsteps  and  use  the 
white  wooden  ones  for  firewood.  Or  else  I 
would  attach  a  lawn  sprinkler  to  the  top  step 
and  fold  my  hands.     Hoopla! 

We  passed  miles  and  miles  of  those  decent, 
white-trimmed,  very  respectable  brick  houses 
on  the  way  to  Fort  McHenry.  The  stuffy  street 
car,  bearing  white  and  black  passengers  in  more 
or  less  close  proximity,  left  us  at  the  Fort  gate 
and  went  back  to  the  city.  I  don't  know  what 
impulse  started  us  on  the  mad  pilgrimage,  for 
historic  battlegrounds  and  forts  are  never  im- 
pressive. In  fifty  years,  even  Champagne  will 
cease  to  affect  us  as  it  should.  We  were  the 
only  tourists  who  had  dared  to  venture  into 
Fort  McHenry  that  day,  and  we  battled  our 
way  around  the  ramparts,  slipping  and  sliding 
[29] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Over  the  frost-encrusted  grass,  in  the  teeth  of  a 
bitter  gale.  Armistead,  done  in  bronze,  faces 
Patapsco  Bay  from  the  walls  he  defended  so 
magnificently  in  1814.  And  behind  him,  where 
Key  saw  the  star-spangled  banner  fluttering 
jbravely  on  that  famous  dawn,  a  tattered  flag, 
very  stained  and  forlorn,  whipped  and  rattled  in 
the  cold  wind.  We  skirted  the  Fort  and  rushed 
back  to  the  stuffy  street  car,  very  depressed. 

There  are  no  baroque  excrescences  in  Balti- 
more's architecture,  and,  except  for  the  startling 
onion-towers  of  the  Cathedral,  the  whole  city 
seems  to  have  made  up  its  mind  to  be  as  con- 
strained as  a  modern  emotional  actress.  The 
[Cathedral  is  a  wild  combination  of  the  classic 
and  the  Oriental,  the  only  Catholic  church  I 
have  ever  been  in  that  has  not  made  me  regret 
that  I  do  not  belong  to  the  old  faith.  There  was 
no  mystery  in  its  shadows,  no  sombre  flickering 
of  candles,  no  faint  odour  of  incense.  It  seemed 
to  us  that  Baltimore  could  never  mean  to  Amer- 
ica what  Rome  means  to  Europe,  for  one  would 
not  make  a  pilgrimage  to  its  Cathedral  as  one 
journeys  to  St.  Peter's.  We  should  expect  ex- 
alted architecture  in  our  cathedrals — lacy  fan 
vaultings,  frescoed  choirs,  windows  that  smoul- 
der like  the  fires  of  an  ardent  heart,  rich  chap- 
els,   shadows,    silence    and    beauty.      For   why 

[30] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

should  we  dedicate  anything  to  God  that  is  not 
the  best  we  have  to  give? 

The  rest  of  Baltimore  pays  strict  attention  to 
beauty,  and  there  is  something  in  the  city's  phy- 
siognomy not  unlike  the  studied  elegance  of 
Paris  and  Munich.  Automobiles  are  parked 
in  an  orderly  way  and  are  sternly  warned  not  to 
stand  at  street  crossings;  disfiguring  telephone 
and  lighting  wires  are  buried  underground,  like 
family  skeletons,  and  there  are  parks  and  neat 
grass  plots  everywhere.  We  splashed  through 
street  after  street  of  fine  old  red  brick  houses 
with  simple  doorways  and  wide  windows  cur- 
tained with  mathematical  precision,  veiled  just 
so  far  and  no  further.  We  wondered  how  the 
exact  position  of  the  window  curtains  was  de- 
termined— by  popular  vote,  by  a  tacit  under- 
standing as  binding  as  a  sworn  pledge,  or 
simply  because  of  an  inherited  sense  of  the 
proprieties!  Civic  pride  in  Baltimore  permits 
itself  only  one  exuberance.  Statues  and  monu- 
ments fill  the  landscape  and  clog  the  public 
squares — there  are  statues  to  the  heroes  of  1814, 
Civil  War  monuments,  Columbus  monuments, 
a  delicate  column  in  memory  of  those  Mary- 
landers  who  fought  during  the  Revolution,  and 
an  impressive  shaft  topped  by  a  statue  of  Wash- 
ington. Was  it  my  imagination,  or  does  the 
[31J] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Washington  monument  smack  of  those  Roman 
columns  (there  is  one  in  the  Piazza  Colonna,  I 
remember)  which  have  been  deprived  of  their 
pagan  heroes  and  supplied  with  saints?  Is  it 
my  imagination,  or  has  Washington  lost  his 
martial  air?  He  stretches  out  his  hand  as  if  he 
were  bestowing  a  blessing  on  Baltimore,  and  he 
is  so  far  away  that  he  might  be  St.  Peter  or  St. 
Paul.  He  only  lacks  a  halo  to  fit  into  the  Cath- 
olic atmosphere  of  the  locality,  a  gigantic  St. 
George  facing  the  Cathedral. 

On  either  side  of  the  monument  there  are 
neat,  well-clipped  little  parks,  Charles  and  Mon- 
ument Streets  obligingly  becoming  Washing- 
ton Place  and  Mount  Vernon  Place  in  honour 
of  the  aloof  hero,  and  decking  themselves  out 
with  pleasant  fountains  and  trees  for  several 
blocks.  In  Washington  Place,  not  at  all 
dwarfed  by  the  great  shaft  but  holding  their 
own  through  sheer  perfection,  there  are  a  half 
dozen  bronzes  by  the  French  master  Barye, 
coloured  by  rain  and  sun,  snow  and  fog,  with  a 
beauty  as  rare  as  the  opalescent  magic  of  Cel- 
lini's Perseus.  We  stood  in  the  rain  and  blessed 
it  for  treating  bronze  as  it  does,  and  blessed 
Baltimore  for  putting  Barye's  bronzes  where 
the  rain  can  get  at  them. 

Somehow  the  wicket  gate  of  a  museum,  click- 

[32] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

ing  me  into  a  shrine  of  art,  deprives  me  of  en- 
thusiasms; lam  tired  before  I  am  fairly  inside. 
I  don't  like  to  see  intimate  masterpieces  hung 
in  rows  like  dead  fishermen's  trophies.  I  don't 
care  for  statues  placed  side  by  side  in  cold, 
whitely  illuminated  halls,  like  bloodless  corpses 
in  a  marble  morgue.  I  want  to  see  pictures  in 
houses  and  statues  in  gardens  and  jewelry  worn 
against  the  living  flesh  and  books  on  library 
shelves.  I  would  walk  miles  to  see  a  half-for- 
gotten Madonna  in  a  dim  and  dusty  church  or 
to  hold  a  silver  altar  lamp  in  my  hands  while  an 
untruthful  sexton  babbles  its  fabulous  and  whol- 
ly imaginary  history.  There  is  a  Lorenzetto  in  a 
baptistery  at  Siena  that  is  more  precious  to  me 
than  all  the  masterpieces  in  the  Uffizi,  simply  be- 
cause I  saw  it  by  the  light  of  a  flickering  wax 
taper  one  blue  twilight  a  long  time  ago.  The 
Baryes  in  Washington  Place  in  Baltimore  have 
just  the  same  quiet  way  of  saying,  "You  don't 
have  to  look  at  us  if  you  don't  want  to.  You 
don't  have  to  whisper  in  our  presence.  We  are 
not  in  a  gallery.  Here  we  are,  passerby,  for 
your  delectation." 

We  were  disappointed  because  we  did  not 
see  any  of  Baltimore's  famous  beauties;  I  had 
wanted  to  make  comparisons,  and  Allan — well, 
he  was  disappointed  anyway.     I  couldn't  find 

[33] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

out  where  Baltimore  beauties  stay  when  it  rains, 
for  certainly  they  do  not  risk  their  loveliness 
out  of  doors.  Ever  since  Miss  Betsy  Patterson 
of  Baltimore  enraptured  Jerome  Bonaparte  and 
married  him,  Maryland  beauty  is  supposed  to 
have  been  of  the  blighting,  death-dealing  va- 
riety. Virginia  argues  the  claim  because  one  of 
the  royal  Murats  of  Naples  married  a  Virgin- 
ian and  "lived  happily  ever  after"  in  Talla- 
hassee. So  that  to-day  skittish  young  men  avoid 
Maryland  and  Virginia  as  they  would  the 
plague,  remembering  what  happened  to  two 
princes  a  long  time  ago  when  young  men  were 
braver  in  love. 

The  street  crowds  in  Baltimore  were  like 
street  crowds  the  world  over,  or  at  least,  the 
Occidental  world  over!  There  were  distinctive 
American  differences — the  men  wore  felt  hats 
turned  up  in  the  back  and  down  in  the  front, 
they  carried  their  unlighted  cigars  fixed  immov- 
ably in  the  corner  of  their  mouths,  and  they 
hurried  prodigiously.  The  women  looked  like 
New  Yorkers,  but  I  detected  a  slight  variation 
in  the  angle  of  their  hats.  Not  a  damnable 
variation  like  the  Swedish,  which  puts  milli- 
nery atop  hair-dressing  as  if  a  hat  were  a  boat 
and  a  bang  a  wave  (I  have  no  double  inten- 
tions), nor  the  English  variation  which  places 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

headgear  on  the  shoulder  blades.  The  Balti- 
more variation  is  a  slight  surrender  to  the  mode. 
"Let  me  see  from  under  my  hat,"  says  Lady 
Baltimore,  and  sees  whether  it  is  fashionable  or 
not.  New  York's  baleful  influence  in  high 
white  kid  shoes,  run  over  at  the  heel,  had  spread 
like  the  measles,  and  there  were  samples  of  that 
remarkable  New  York  product,  the  "young 
thing,"  short-waisted  and  fragile,  anaemic  and 
bored,  powdered  beyond  belief  on  the  tip  of 
the  nose,  gum-chewing,  independent,  and  sophis- 
ticated. She  had  the  balm,  in  Baltimore,  of 
a  slightly  softer  speech,  although  you  must  go 
further  south  to  hear  "gy-aden"  for  garden. 
The  rest  of  the  crowd  was  made  up  of  negroes 
and  sea-going  men,  the  negroes  all  inconceiv- 
ably forlorn  and  tattered,  the  sea-going  men 
wearing  those  blue  jerseys,  a  little  too  short  in 
the  sleeves,  and  the  visored  caps  which  seem  to 
be  a  part  of  their  traditional  makeup.  The  most 
respectable  and  self-respecting  darkies  lurked 
in  the  dining-rooms  of  the  Rennert,  where  they 
murmured  suggestions  or  swayed  from  the  kit- 
chens to  the  serving  tables  bearing  enormous 
trays  on  the  pink  palms  of  their  hands.  They 
seemed  to  enjoy  the  luxury  of  their  surround- 
ings, their  white  waistcoats  and  the  pleasant  un- 
certainty of  tips. 

[35] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

We  encountered  the  other  variety  of  negro 
on  the  way  to  Annapolis,  when  a  deputy  sheriff 
boarded  the  electric  car  with  two  black  prison- 
ers. Just  before  the  car  started,  a  police  patrol 
brought  the  wretched  fellows  at  a  gallop;  they 
were  shoved,  pushed,  pulled  and  jostled  through 
the  crowd  and  put  aboard  the  car  with  scant 
ceremony.  Shackled  to  the  sheriff's  wrists,  they 
rode  nearly  the  whole  way  to  Annapolis,  spoil- 
ing the  landscape,  for  me  at  least.  They  were 
pitiful  and  revolting,  criminally  insane,  the 
sheriff  said,  and  although  they  were  big  enough 
to  have  strangled  their  sandy-haired  Irish  cap- 
tor with  one  hand,  they  sat  facing  him  in  a 
wretched,  dumb  silence,  their  huge  shackled 
hands  hanging  limply  together.  We  had  not 
crossed  the  Mason-Dixon  line,  but  the  dark 
strain  was  already  dominant  in  the  discordant 
national  symphony.  As  we  went  further  south 
we  were  to  hear  it  grow  louder  and  louder,  in 
a  crescendo  of  intensity,  reaching  its  climax  at 
Savannah  and  dwindling  again  in  Texas  to 
minor  melody.  It  seemed  to  us  that  the  negroes 
were  shabbiest  in  Baltimore  and  Charleston, 
that  they  were  most  likable  in  Norfolk,  that 
they  were  most  offensive  at  Savannah  and  most 
picturesque  in  New  Orleans  and  St.  Augustine. 
The  upstart  type  has  crept  further  and  further 
[36] 


THE    ONE-    AND    TWO-STORIED    HOUSES    AND    COBBLED 
STREETS  REMINDED  US  OF  CLOVELLV 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

ii 


into  the  South,  to  the  great  disadvanage  of  the 
self-respecting,  infinitely  better  class  that  has 
not  forgotten  how  to  say  "Yessah"  and  "Yes'm." 
A  Virginian  said  to  me,  "We  could  not  do  with- 
out the  darkies.  They  are  better  labour,  for  us 
who  understand  them,  than  Italians."  And  he 
added,  "You  Northerners  don't  know  how  to 
manage  'em.  A  nice  combination  of  the  au- 
thoritative and  the  paternal  does  the  trick.  But 
you  have  to  be  born  to  it."  I  do  not  pretend  to 
know  whether  he  was  right,  but  I  do  know  that 
the  jaunty,  overdressed,  impudent  and  self-as- 
sertive negro  cannot  possibly  be  the  result  of  a 
paternal  authority.  Some  one  is  to  blame,  per- 
haps, who  was  not,  to  quote  the  Virginian, 
"born  to  it." 

For  an  hour  the  two  ragged  black  wretches 
stared  at  the  floor  and  let  the  bleak  landscape 
race  past  without  once  turning  their  heads  to 
glance  at  it.  Patches  of  snow  were  still  lying 
in  the  hollows,  and  spitting  clouds  raced  close 
to  the  earth,  almost  touching  the  pointed  tips 
of  the  black  cypress  pines.  The  approach  to 
Annapolis,  like  Annapolis  itself,  is  not  spectac- 
ular. The  electric  car  jangles  into  the  town 
and  puts  you  down  at  the  door  of  the  State 
House,  or,  more  exactly,  a  short  block  away 
from  it,  with  as  little  ostentation  as  possible. 
[37] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Annapolis  was  sound  asleep  when  we  were 
there.  The  Capitol  dozed  on  its  hilltop,  the  lit- 
tle rows  of  quaint  and  ramshackled  houses 
snoozed  gently,  the  enormous  Academy  build- 
ings snored  outright  in  profound  slumber.  I 
don't  know  whether  the  town  was  indulging  in 
a  daily  siesta  or  whether  the  entire  population 
had  gone  to  Baltimore  for  the  afternoon,  for 
Annapolis,  like  Washington,  is  a  suburb  of  the 
Monument  City!  The  only  living  things  we 
encountered  in  our  wanderings  were  the  sentry 
at  the  Academy  gates,  a  priest,  two  erect  cadets 
and  a  nigger's  hound! 

Annapolis  is  the  oldest  chartered  city  in 
America,  a  very  small  city  indeed  to  stagger  un- 
der such  an  honour.  It  is  besides  the  capital  of 
Maryland,  and  I  was  so  sentimentally  affected 
by  the  precious  soil  under  my  feet  that  I 
hummed  "Maryland,  my  Maryland"  with  great 
stress,  for  even  nomads  thrill  to  the  feel  of  na- 
tive earth.  I  could  remember  the  tune,  but  I 
confess  to  my  everlasting  shame  that  Randall's 
poetry  was  beyond  me. 

The  old  town  is  splendidly  picturesque.  The 
one  and  two-storied  houses  and  the  cobbled 
streets,  dipping  steeply  down  to  the  water- 
front, reminded  us  of  Clovelly,  Clovelly  of 
blessed  Devonshire  memory!    For  Annapolis  is 

[38] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

first  and  last  an  English  town,  a  town  of  red 
brick  and  high  garden  walls,  quaint  corners, 
tidy  shops  and  an  air  of  great  decorum  and 
friendliness.  Queen  Anne  and  the  Georges 
left  a  characteristic  architecture,  beautified  by- 
its  colonial  transplanting  into  something  rare 
and  distinguished.  The  Brice  house  shows 
what  America,  plus  an  English  heritage,  can  do 
architecturally.  If  America  would  only  go  on 
doing  it! 

The  Naval  Academy  buildings  are  a  sore 
disappointment,  for  you  must  pass  the  dignified 
and  aquiline  State  House,  where  Washington 
surrendered  his  commission  in  1783,  and  where 
the  First  Constitutional  Convention  was  held 
three  years  later,  on  your  way  to  the  Academy 
close.  The  gaunt  ugliness  of  the  College  build- 
ings is  softened  by  wide-spreading  lawns, 
clipped  like  a  German  pate,  and  by  groups  of 
magnificent  trees.  But  it  is  perfectly  apparent 
that  since  its  foundation  in  1845  tne  Naval 
Academy  has  been  accumulating  ponderous  and 
hideous  buildings,  reaching  a  sort  of  hysterical 
climax  in  the  new  chapel,  which  rises  like  a 
gilded  and  frosted  sugar  birthday  cake  over  the 
body  of  John  Paul  Jones.  If  Jones  could  see  his 
sepulchre  he  would  beg  pitifully  to  be  taken 
[39] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

back  to  France  and  re-entombed  in  his  obscure 
and  well-nigh  forgotten  French  grave. 

Down  on  the  shore  of  the  little  Severn  River, 
where  we  had  wandered  to  recover  from  our 
architectural  tirade,  we  encountered  the  negro 
hound.  I  don't  mean  that  he  was  a  black  hound 
— far  from  it.  He  was,  or  had  been  before  he 
rolled  in  acres  of  thick  Maryland  mud,  as  white 
as  the  driven  snow.  We  knew  he  was  a  negro 
hound  by  the  humble  look  in  his  eyes,  the 
ashamed  droop  of  his  thick  tail.  He  wouldn't 
come  to  us,  although  I  whistled  and  crooned 
and  begged.  All  the  while  Allan  was  drawing 
a  cluster  of  small  sailing  boats  and  dories,  I 
wooed  the  hound.  He  wagged,  he  rolled  his 
eyes  at  me  and  lolled  out  his  tongue  in  a  wide 
grin,  but  he  was  as  bashful  as  a  pickaninny.  He 
knew  better  than  to  take  the  caresses  of  a  white 
hand;  he  knew  I  was  mistaken;  he  apologised 
and  tried  to  explain  that  he  was  poor  and  hum- 
ble, and  that  he  had  dedicated  his  love  to  an- 
other race.  He  struggled  to  tell  me  that  he 
knew  his  place  and  that  he  had  so  far  for- 
gotten his  past  that  he  had  tried  to  change  his 
colour  by  rolling  in  the  mud;  if  he  had  achieved 
a  mulatto  complexion,  he  was  not  to  blame. 
Would  I  excuse  him?  I  would  and  did.  I 
stopped  my  clucking  and  said,  in  a  stern  voice, 

[40] 


A  CLUSTER  OF  SMALL  SAILING  BOATS  AND  DORIES 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

smiling  broadly,  "You  run  right  along  home. 
D'you  heah  me,  you  good-fo'-nothing  houn'?" 
And  he  leaped  for  joy  and  trotted  away,  enor- 
mously relieved. 

The  oyster  boats  cluster  like  barnacles  along 
the  water-front,  so  close-packed  that  you  can 
walk  from  one  to  the  other  for  blocks  without 
taking  a  single  long  step.  They  were  the  only 
craft  we  saw,  although  only  a  half  a  mile  away 
our  future  admirals  were  learning  the  super-art 
of  seamanship.  A  thick  mist  had  obligingly  fol- 
lowed us  down  from  Baltimore  and  hung  like 
a  blanket  over  Annapolis,  obscuring  the  bay  en- 
tirely. So  we  climbed  back  into  the  town,  pur- 
suing beautiful  architecture  as  long  as  there 
was  a  vestige  of  the  pale  twilight  left.  The  two 
erect  cadets,  laced  into  their  jackets  to  the  burst- 
ing point  and  very  shy,  as  all  real  seamen  are 
when  they  are  ashore,  directed  us  to  the  electric 
car's  starting  place.  But  we  lost  it  again,  since 
Annapolis  streets  take  their  own  sweet  way  and 
ramble  on  as  inconsequentially  as  Confederate 
veterans.  We  had  to  be  set  right,  very  appro- 
priately, by  a  benign  priest  who  was  pacing  up 
and  down  a  garden  path  on  the  other  side  of  a 
low  brick  wall.  Allan  looked  over  the  top  and 
lifted  his  hat,  breaking  in  on  the  evening's  medi- 
tation with  a  subdued  and  gentle  question. 
[41] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

"Straight  ahead,"  was  the  priest's  answer. 

So  we  turned  humbly  away,  set  at  last  on  the 
right  path,  and  determined,  come  what  would, 
to  keep  going  straight  ahead. 


[42] 


CHAPTER  III 

WHICH  CONTAINS  A  TROLLY  TRIP  AND  A 
LAUNDRY  GRIEVANCE 


NLAND  steamers  are  the  pariahs  of 
the  ship  world.  They  are  neither 
fish,  flesh  nor  fowl.  River,  lake  and 
bay  steamers,  sound  and  harbour 
steamers,  channel  and  canal  steamers — they  are 
all  alike,  with  their  excursion  manner,  their 
cramped  deck  space,  their  red  carpets  and  velvet 
lounge  chairs,  their  piles  of  folded  and  dingy 
camp  stools,  and,  in  America,  their  horribly 
sleepy  coloured  stewards  in  crumpled  white 
coats.  When  the  porter  at  the  Rennert  advised 
us  to  go  on  to  Norfolk  by  water,  we  knew  what 
we  were  being  let  in  for.  But  we  bought  our 
tickets  because  we  hoped  that  the  fog  would  lift 
before  morning  and  disclose  the  pageant  of  Nor- 
folk harbour  and  Hampton  Roads.  Vain  hope! 
Smug  and  credulous  Nauthoress  and  Nillustra- 
tor!  We  should  not  have  expected  miracles  of 
a  Chesapeake  Bay  fog! 
We  permitted  the  positive  porter  to  transfer 

[43] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

us  from  the  hotel  to  the  dock  while  we  were 
still  under  the  spell  of  his  eloquence  and  before 
we  could  convince  him,  or  each  other,  that  it 
was  bound  to  be  a  foggy  night  and  that  we  might 
just  as  well  wait  another  day.  It  was  too  late  to 
turn  back  when  the  taxi  drew  up  at  the  dock,  for 
an  army  of  stewards  fell  on  our  luggage  (one 
for  each  suitcase  and  two  for  each  trunk),  and 
escorted  us  to  our  staterooms.  Allan  tipped  six 
of  them  for  service  and  eight  more  for  moral 
assistance,  and  after  reading  the  framed  warn- 
ings to  lock  the  door,  to  watch  out  for  thieves, 
to  look  under  the  berth  for  life-preservers,  and 
to  turn  out  the  light,  we  went  on  deck,  pro- 
foundly depressed. 

The  interior  of  an  excursion  steamer  always 
reminds  me  of  a  varnished  and  upholstered 
columbarium.  The  restless  passengers  pop  in 
and  out  of  their  tomb  doors  like  lively  ghosts 
or  sit,  first  a  passenger,  then  a  nickel  spittoon,  in 
neat  regularity,  the  entire  length  of  the  pro- 
digious corridors.  The  typical  excursionist 
resists  fresh  air  with  an  almost  fanatical  vio- 
lence; he  stays  in  the  red-velvet  saloons,  reading 
highly-coloured  magazines  and  only  venturing 
on  deck  for  a  hurried  smoke.  He  is  impervious 
to  sunsets  and  dawns,  to  the  beauty  of  passing 
ships  and  the  mystery  of  the  sea. 

[44] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

The  Norfolk  steamer  left  Baltimore  at  dusk 
with  the  casual  and  leisurely  farewell  of  a  ferry- 
boat. The  pallid  passengers,  already  seasick, 
had  taken  to  their  staterooms  or  to  their  velvet 
lounges,  the  stewards  had  fallen  permanently 
asleep,  and  Allan  and  I  were  alone  on  the  wet, 
slippery  stern  deck  where  we  could  feel  the 
violent  shiverings  of  the  screw  as  the  steamer 
churned  and  backed  out  of  the  slip  into  the 
harbour.  Baltimore  glittered  behind  us  in  a 
subdued,  well-bred  way — discreet  as  always! 
Only  one  electric  sign,  shrieking  Coca-Cola  in 
letters  six  feet  high,  dripped  and  blinked  in 
liquid  sheets  of  light,  and  in  the  heart  of  the  city 
a  huge  illuminated  clock  face  explained  that  it 
was  half-past  six. 

The  steamer  edged  into  the  wider  channel  and 
swung  around,  kicking  up  foam  like  a  young- 
ster learning  how  to  swim.  Then  we  faced 
Patapsco  Bay,  Baltimore  apparently  shifting  to 
the  wrong  side  of  the  horizon  with  our  turning 
and  dropping  rapidly  behind  like  a  conflagra- 
tion snuffed  out  by  the  sea.  On  both  banks  of 
the  bay  long  strings  of  light  rimmed  the  water's 
edge;  factory  chimneys  flared  in  dramatic  out- 
bursts against  the  gathering  darkness  of  the  sky. 
Tugs  crossed  our  bow  trailing  fiery  reflections, 
launches   tossed   in   our  wake   a   moment  like 

[45] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

bobbing  corks  and  then  disappeared;  schooners 
drifted  by,  incredibly  remote  and  mysterious. 
And  always,  from  the  surface  of  the  water,  mist 
wreaths  rose,  twisted,  tore  loose  and  curled  up- 
ward, drifting  across  the  deck  and  powdering 
our  cheeks  and  hair  with  iridescent  sequins. 

"Dirty  weather,"  I  said  in  a  professional  tone. 

"Very  thick,"  Allan  agreed  solemnly. 

We  stood  mournfully  by  the  rail,  the  mist 
stinging  our  faces,  and  exchanged  reminiscences 
of  fogs  at  sea.  This  is  a  trick  we  have  when  we 
want  to  test  each  other's  courage.  Of  course  no 
one  ever  wins  the  game  for  it  would  not  be 
cricket  to  exhibit  frazzled  nerves.  And  unless 
Allan  should  happen  to  read  this  book  (which 
is  wholly  improbable),  he  will  never  know  that 
I  am  desperately  afraid  of  encountering  fogs  in 
narrow  channels. 

The  fog  that  enveloped  us  that  night  blotted 
out  the  world  completely  before  we  had  left 
Patapsco  Bay;  in  Chesapeake  Bay  it  became  a 
blanket,  impenetrable,  as  tangible  as  a  wall,  as 
terrifying  as  an  atrocious  nightmare  which  wipes 
out  sense  and  sensibility  and  leaves  nothing  but 
uncertainty  and  terror.  But  I  turned  my  coat 
collar  up  around  my  ears,  paraded  back  and 
forth  across  the  tiny  deck  and  pretended  that  I 
liked  it. 

[46] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

Inside,  where  the  hermetically-sealed  excur- 
sionists read  Hearst  literature  and  chewed  gum, 
a  musical  sailor  played  syncopated  melodies  on 
the  toneless  piano;  "Ragging  the  Scale"  floated 
out  to  us,  making  strange  discords  with  the 
lugubrious  croakings  of  the  foghorn. 

All  night  long  the  shivering  blasts  shook  the 
steamer  like  an  ague  chill  while  we  tossed  in  our 
narrow  berths  and  put  the  hard  pillows  now 
under  one  cheek,  now  under  the  other  in  a  futile 
struggle  to  sleep.  Fainter,  groaning  horns  al- 
ways answered,  now  to  starboard,  now  to  port, 
now  dead  ahead,  like  the  melancholy  wails  of 
lost  souls.  I  was  alert  and  active  all  night, 
hopping  out  of  bed  to  look  into  the  impenetrable 
fog,  seeing  nothing  but  my  own  shadow  drift- 
ing, grotesquely  projected  against  the  compact 
mist.  Like  the  nervous  motorist  who  drives  an 
automobile  from  the  back  seat  by  concentrating 
unselfishly  on  the  road,  I  navigated  the  tortuous 
channels  of  Chesapeake  Bay  by  standing  in  the 
open  window  of  my  stateroom  and  giving  my 
whole  attention  to  the  elusive  foghorns.  Like 
will-o'-the-wisps  they  skipped  from  side  to  side 
of  the  bay,  tormenting  pilots  and  upsetting 
steamer  schedules.  My  watchfulness  must  have 
done  some  good,  for  towards  morning  a  sleepy 
steward  rapped  at  my  door  and  said  that  we 
[47] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

were  comin'  into  Ole  Point  Comfo't  presently 
and  that  the  gen'mun  in  numbah  fo'ty-fo'  wanted 
me  to  come  out  on  deck. 

Apparently  Allan  still  hoped  for  an  eleventh- 
hour  miracle  and  a  glimpse  of  Hampton  Roads 
and  Norfolk  Harbor  at  dawn.  I  locked  my  door 
and  tiptoed  down  a  snoring  corridor,  past  stew- 
ards and  stewardesses  asleep  in  abandoned  atti- 
tudes under  the  full  glare  of  many  electric 
lights,  past  the  musical  sailor  stretched  full 
length  on  a  red  velvet  divan  with  his  round  cap 
over  his  face,  past  sleepy  watchmen  and  yawn- 
ing deckhands.  The  rest  of  the  passengers  slept 
soundly  in  their  columbarium  roosts,  sceptical 
or  initiated  or  perhaps  forewarned  that  the 
steamer  would  be  late.  I  found  Allan  on  the 
forward  deck,  gazing  hopefully  into  a  dripping 
wall  of  fog. 

"Did  you  sleep?"  I  asked. 

"Yes,  like  a  top,"  he  lied. 

And  I  echoed,  trying  to  open  my  eyes  wide 
and  to  look  brisk,  "So  did  I !    Like  a  top !" 

The  steamer  and  the  fog  were  playing  an  ex- 
citing game  of  hide-and-seek.  The  fog  laid 
traps,  becoming  at  once  opaque  and  impene- 
trable, parting  suddenly  to  show  us  the  stern 
lights  of  a  schooner  just  ahead,  then  blotting  out 
the  vision  forever.    The  steamer  advanced  cau- 

[48] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

tiously,  slowing  down  so  that  the  revolutions 
of  the  screw  ceased  altogether  and  there  was  no 
sound  but  the  slight  hissing  of  the  water  along 
the  sides,  then  leaping  ahead  again  at  top  speed 
like  a  hunting  dog  that  has  picked  up  its  quarry's 
scent.  Bell  buoys,  light  buoys,  the  pilot  and 
Providence  got  us  safely  into  Old  Point  Com- 
fort. 

We  heard  voices  before  the  pier  loomed  out 
of  the  shadows  at  all.  Then  we  saw  electric 
lights,  blurring  round  holes  in  the  fog,  and  the 
steamer  churned  and  splashed  sideways  toward 
them.  As  soon  as  she  was  made  fast  a  swarm  of 
negro  stevedores  rushed  aboard,  trundling  bar- 
rows and  trucks  back  and  forth  like  toiling 
demon  ghosts. 

Dawn  overtook  us  there,  a  steel-blue  dawn 
that  only  deepened  the  confusing  mystery  of  the 
fog.  Imperceptibly,  the  piles  and  shedding  of 
the  wharf  appeared,  we  saw  a  motor  car  stand- 
ing apparently  on  the  top  of  the  water,  long 
bands  of  light  like  prodigious  antennae  stabbing 
the  darkness  before  it.  And  suddenly,  as  if  an 
obscuring  veil  had  been  whisked  away,  we  saw 
the  famous  towers  of  the  Hotel  Chamberlain, 
then  the  enormous  fagade  and  a  few  scattered 
lights  blotted  and  indistinct. 

Gibraltar  wears  a  Prudential  face  for  most 
[49] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

of  us,  and  the  Hotel  Chamberlain — quick,  what 
does  it  mean  to  you?  A  gay  scene,  of  course — 
a  foreground  of  warships,  white  duck  officers 
and  ladies  with  parasols,  a  background  filled 
with  the  biggest  hotel  in  the  world!  Advertis- 
ing has  made  the  Chamberlain  the  most  famous 
hotel  in  America — its  picture  is  as  familiar  to 
us  as  Mennen's  celebrated  ugliness,  Phoebe 
Snow  and  the  bearded  Smith  Brothers.  I  was 
shocked  to  find  that  the  Chamberlain,  like  Mark 
Twain's  woolliest  dog,  wasn't  so  "dinged"  big, 
after  all!  It  is  a  large  hotel,  but  years  of  adver- 
tising have  created  an  imaginative  colossus,  a 
sort  of  wooden  Louvre  where  gay  ladies  and  im- 
maculate officers  dance  from  morning  to  night. 
Negro  stevedores  where  I  had  pictured  admirals 
and  generals!  I  felt  that  somehow  I  had  been 
cheated. 

Nor  was  I  the  only  one  who  expected  gaiety 
and  leisure.  A  coloured  person  of  imagination 
was  leaning  against  one  of  the  trucks  down  on 
the  wharf  doing  nothing  very  well. 

"Look  heah,"  one  of  the  labouring  stevedores 
yelled  at  him,  "why  don't  you  get  to  work,  you 
good-fo'-nothin'  nigger?" 

The  victim  of  Hotel  Chamberlain  advertis- 
ing methods  leaned  more  cozily  against  the 
truck.    "Ah  ain'  lookin'  fo'  work,  boss,"  said  he, 

[50] 


THE   FERRY   SEIP  AT  NORFOLK 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

"s'long  as  Ah  can  find  anything  better  to  do." 
We  crossed  to  Norfolk  between  a  double  row 
of  anchored  ships  all  pathetically  anxious  to 
make  themselves  seen  and  heard.  If  we  had 
been  conquering  heroes  we  could  not  have  been 
given  a  more  vociferous  greeting — horns,  bells, 
wailing  battleship  sirens,  and  whistling  buoys 
warned  us  to  keep  to  the  channel,  the  whole  crew 
of  a  small  schooner  standing  on  deck  to  pound  on 
kitchen  utensils  until  we  were  out  of  sight.  So, 
triumphantly,  we  came  to  Norfolk. 

Norfolk  announces  itself  to  the  traveller  by 
a  huge  sign  advertising  Anheuser-Busch,  but 
Virginia  has  gone  dry;  Virginia,  the  land  of 
mint  juleps  and  convivial  F.  F.  V.  colonels,  has 
gone  bone  dry!  The  head  waiter  at  the  Monti- 
cello  informed  us  of  the  State's  tragedy  at  break- 
fast, as  if  he  were  afraid  that  we  might  be  in  the 
New  York  habit  of  drinking  cocktails  at  nine 
o'clock  in  the  morning.  The  hotel  dining- 
rooms  are  on  the  eighth  floor,  possibly  to  coun- 
teract the  low  spirits  caused  by  this  sudden 
abstinence.  And,  indeed,  if  anything  could  make 
one  forget  the  lack  of  the  stimulating  toddy, 
the  view  from  the  Monticello  windows  ought  to. 
Prohibition  struck  a  hard  blow  at  some  of  the 
Virginian  hotels,  and  of  course  it  put  some  very 
prosperous  "pubs"  out  of  business  altogether, 

[51] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

but  it  is  a  comforting  fact  that  being  alco- 
holically  dry  has  not  hurt  the  State  financially. 
The  Monticello,  which  is  the  largest  and  most 
pretentious  hotel  in  Norfolk,  has  balanced  its 
deficit  to  a  certain  extent  by  charging  ten  cents 
an  order  for  bread  and  butter.  If  it  had  done 
the  same  thing  a  year  ago,  the  management 
would  have  netted  something  like  fifteen  thou- 
sand dollars  on  bread  and  butter  alone.  So  there 
is  a  balm  for  every  wound — even  prohibition! 
I  could  not  find  out  how  the  negroes  feel  about 
their  loss.  There  used  to  be  a  bar  in  the  col- 
oured quarter  in  Norfolk  where  fourteen  bar- 
tenders, each  with  a  cash  register  before  him, 
served  drinks  to  thirsty  Ethiopians  from  dawn 
to  dawn.  The  thirty-five  thousand  negroes  of 
the  quarter  must  have  been  as  insatiable  as  the 
ladies  of  Whitechapel.  Now  they  are  reduced 
to  their  legal  quart  obtainable  only  once  in  so 
often,  delivered  by  express  and  as  sweet  to  their 
thirsty  tongues  as  dew  in  the  parching  desert. 
In  Norfolk  they  tell  the  story  of  the  unfortunate 
darkey  who  went  to  the  express  office  for  his 
quart  a  week  before  Christmas.  As  he  was  com- 
ing out  again  with  the  precious  bottle  tucked 
under  his  arm,  he  slipped  on  the  icy  pavement, 
lost  his  footing  and  fell  headlong,  smashing  his 

[52] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

treasure  into  fragments.  He  sat  up  and  con- 
templated the  ruins. 

"Oh,  Gawd,"  he  said  bitterly,  "oh,  Gawd, 
Christmas  am  done  come  and  gone!" 

The  negro  quarter  is  in  the  centre  of  Norfolk, 
but  it  does  not  encroach  upon  the  white  district; 
black  does  not  mix  with  white  in  the  city,  each 
tide  of  humanity  flowing  side  by  side  like  the 
waters  of  the  Rhone  and  the  Arve,  unmingling 
and  distinct.  Nor  do  the  negroes  seem  to  over- 
flow even  as  pedestrians  into  the  rest  of  the  town ; 
they  stay  in  their  own  few  square  blocks,  attend 
their  own  theatres  and  stare  in  at  our  own  shop 
windows.  They  are  for  the  most  part  unskilled 
labourers  and  do  not  work  together  with  white 
men. 

But  even  without  a  preponderance  of  African 
duskiness  the  streets  of  Norfolk  are  colourful 
enough.  At  night,  when  the  festive  strings  of 
sputtering  arc  lamps  and  electric  bulbs  are 
lighted,  making  a  brilliant  arch  over  the 
shopping  streets,  Norfolk  is  amazingly  gay. 
Sailors  and  marines  from  Portsmouth,  soldiers 
from  Fortress  Monroe  and  aviators  from  New- 
port News  give  a  martial  touch  to  the  street 
crowds  that  is  not  at  all  usual  in  a  country  where 
there  is  no  universal  passion  for  uniforms.  We 
heard  many  English  voices  as  we  wandered  up 

[53] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

and  down  Granby  Street,  for  there  is  a  brisk 
horse-transport  between  Norfolk,  Newport 
News  and  Bristol  and  London  which  brings  an 
increasing  number  of  British  ships  to  Virginia. 

Very  little  ammunition  leaves  the  port  for 
Europe,  for  which  I  should  think  the  Virginians 
must  be  profoundly  grateful.  They  have  left 
that  grave  responsibility  to  New  York  because 
the  Empire  State  is  nearer  the  base  of  supplies. 
But  it  would  have  been  a  strange  analogy  if 
Virginia  had  sent  shells  for  use  against  Eng- 
land's enemies  in  return  for  Lord  Dunmore's 
cannon  balls,  fired  in  1776  into  the  little  city  of 
Norfolk! 

One  of  the  balls  is  hidden  in  the  English  brick 
walls  of  St.  Paul's  church,  but  I  did  not  see  it 
for  I  am  trying  to  forget  old  rancours  now  that 
America  and  England  have  become  flesh  and 
blood  allies  in  the  great  struggle  for  democracy. 
And  Norfolk,  except  for  the  crumbling  walls 
of  old  St.  Stephen's,  was  entirely  destroyed  by 
Dunmore  when  he  turned  the  frigate  Liver- 
pool's guns  on  the  rebel  town  and  reduced 
everything  except  the  inhabitants'  courage  to 
dust.  Up  to  that  time,  Norfolk  had  been  loyally 
English.  It  was  established  on  fifty  acres  of 
ground  bought  from  a  certain  Nicholas  Wise, 
who  must  have  been  an  inveterate  smoker  or 

[54] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

else  a  shrewd  judge  of  the  future,  for  he  ac- 
cepted ten  thousand  pounds  of  tobacco  in  ex- 
change for  his  land.  And  this  was  in  1680,  be- 
fore the  United  States  Tobacco  Company 
dreamed  of  existing!  Anglomania  was  still 
rampant  in  1746,  when  the  men  of  Norfolk  car- 
ried an  effigy  of  the  Pretender,  Charles  Edward 
Stuart,  through  the  streets  of  the  town  and  then 
hanged  and  burned  it.  This  was  "strafing"  with 
a  vengeance,  and  it  did  not  seem  possible  that 
even  such  an  arbitrary  measure  as  the  detested 
Stamp  Act  could  shift  public  opinion  and  set  an 
American  Hymn  of  Hate  ringing  'round  the 
world. 

Ever  since  the  Revolution  the  Virginia  Pen- 
insula has  had  its  thumb  in  the  war-pie.  Great 
and  decisive  battles  were  fought  over  the  his- 
toric ground  during  the  War  of  1812  and  again 
during  the  Civil  War.  And  to-day  one  passes 
from  the  monuments  of  the  historic  dead  to  the 
feverish  activities  of  the  patriotic  living  by 
simply  crossing  the  Elizabeth  River  to  the  Ports- 
mouth Navy  Yard  in  one  direction,  and  Hamp- 
ton Roads  to  Fortress  Monroe  and  the  Curtiss 
Flying  School  in  the  other.  For  Nature 
planned  a  great  destiny  for  Virginia  when  she 
arranged  that  Chesapeake  Bay,  Hampton  Roads, 
the  James  and  the  York  rivers  and  Norfolk 

[55] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Harbor  should  be  within  a  stone's  throw  of 
each  other.  Captain  John  Smith,  who  began  to 
advertise  Old  Point  Comfort  in  1607,  three  hun- 
dred years  before  the  publicity  machinery  of 
the  Hotel  Chamberlain  was  set  in  motion,  wrote 
an  ecstatic  description  of  the  peninsula.  Smith 
was  the  Theodore  Roosevelt  of  his  day — an 
ardent  explorer,  an  adventurous  spirit,  strenu- 
ous, enthusiastic  and  indefatigable.  His  account 
of  the  Virginian  settlement  sounds  like  Roose- 
velt turned  right  about  face  and  transplanted 
into  the  seventeenth  century. 

"There  is  but  one  entrance  into  this  country, 
and  that  is  at  the  mouth  of  a  goodly  bay  eighteen 
or  twenty  miles  broad.  The  cape  on  the  south 
is  called  Cape  Henry,  in  honour  of  our  most 
noble  Prince;  the  north  cape  is  called  Cape 
Charles,  in  honour  of  the  worthy  Duke  of 
York.  The  isles  before  are  called  Smith 
Isles,  by  the  name  of  the  discoverer.  Within 
is  a  country  that  may  have  the  prerogatives 
over  the  most  pleasant  places  known,  for 
earth  and  heaven  never  agreed  better  to  frame 
a  place  for  man's  habitation.  The  mildness  of 
the  air,  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  and  the  situation 
of  the  rivers  are  so  propitious  to  the  use  of  man, 
as  no  place  is  more  convenient  for  pleasure, 
profit,  and  man's  sustenance  under  any  latitude 
[56] 


THE  NAVY  YARD  GATE,  PORTSMOUTH 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

or  climate.  So  then,  here  is  a  place,  a  nurse  for 
soldiers,  a  practice  for  mariners,  a  trade  for 
merchants,  a  reward  for  the  good,  and  that 
which  is  most  of  all,  a  business  (most  acceptable 
to  God)  to  bring  such  poor  infidels  to  the 
knowledge  of  God  and  His  Holy  Gospel." 

Like  Roosevelt,  who  replied  cryptically  to 
those  questioners  of  the  River  of  Doubt,  "It  is 
still  there,"  Captain  Smith  let  posterity  decide 
whether  or  not  the  Virginia  Peninsula  was  worth 
discovering.  He  dubbed  its  furthermost  tip  Old 
Point  Comfort,  although  the  name  is  more  ap- 
propriate now  than  it  could  have  been  in  those 
early  days  of  suffering  and  discouragement  when 
America  was  in  thevlarva  state  and  none  of  the 
wretched  settlers  knew  what  would  emerge  from 
the  chrysalis — a  grub,  a  butterfly,  or  an  eagle. 
It  is  decidedly  a  comforting  and  comfortable 
Old  Point  to-day,  for  the  powerful  batteries  of 
Fortress  Monroe  and  Fort  Wool,  "Rip  Raps," 
face  the  entrance  to  Chesapeake  Bay,  giving  a 
pleasant  sense  of  security  to  the  Virginians, 
while  the  sun  parlours  and  medicinal  baths  and 
wide  porches  of  the  Chamberlain  attend  to  the 
creature  comforts  of  hordes  of  tourists.  The 
Government  does  not  put  too  much  faith  in  the 
thick  walls  and  batteries  of  the  two  forts  on 
Smith's  Point,  perhaps  because  the  fall  of  Liege 
[57] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

went  a  long  way  to  prove  that  even  the  thickest 
walls  crumble  under  modern  guns.  A  new  fort 
is  being  built  at  Cape  Henry,  on  the  opposite 
side  of  Chesapeake  Bay,  just  where  the  first  Eng- 
lish settlers  landed  in  1607. 

We  had  been  so  baffled  by  the  fog  on  the  morn- 
ing of  our  arrival  at  Norfolk  that  we  went  back 
to  Old  Point  Comfort  as  soon  as  the  sky  had 
cleared  and  a  pale  winter  sun  had  come  out, 
crossing  by  ferry  from  Willoughby  Spit.  We 
walked  around  the  high  ramparts  of  Fortress 
Monroe,  meeting  with  nothing  more  military 
than  a  lone  bugler  who  was  practising  reveille 
and  taps,  very  much  off  the  key.  We  accosted 
him,  as  much  to  put  a  stop  to  the  excruciating 
melody  as  to  find  out  how  to  get  out  of  the  fort 
again,  and  as  he  walked  with  us  across  the 
pleasant  enclosure,  past  barracks  and  officers' 
quarters  to  the  main  gate,  he  confided  to  us  that 
a  soldier's  life  is  a  dog's  life  and  that  he  wanted 
to  "get  back  to  Jersey  City."  Apparently  brass 
buttons  and  a  brand-new  bugle  could  not  com- 
pensate for  military  restrictions.  The  confiding 
young  bugler  enjoyed  life  at  Fortress  Monroe 
as  little  perhaps  as  President  Jefferson  Davis  did 
when  he  was  confined  there  after  the  Civil  War. 
The  disillusioned  president  spent  the  year  and 
a  half  of  his  imprisonment  in  Casement  No.  2, 

[58] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

which  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  an  under- 
ground cell  in  spite  of  a  pretence  at  windows 
and  a  pillared  entrance.  But  Jefferson's  confine- 
ment was  no  more  restricted  than  the  Pope's, 
and  like  the  Pope  he  had  the  balm  of  beautiful 
trees,  the  thick  shade  of  clustering  live  oaks, 
well-clipped  lawns,  flowers  and  a  view  from  the 
high  walls  of  his  prison  across  incomparable 
country. 

We  were  the  proud  possessors  of  a  letter  of 
introduction  written  by  a  very  distinguished 
army  officer  to  another  very  distinguished  army 
officer  who  was  stationed  at  Fortress  Monroe, 
but  we  did  not  present  it  for  fear  that  the  whole 
military  order  of  the  day  might  be  upset;  two 
years  in  Germany  had  taught  us  a  wholesome  re- 
spect for  gold  braid.  I  remember  sprinting 
through  the  English  Gardens  in  Munich  at  top 
speed  to  get  ahead  of  the  swift-running  Iser,  for 
I  had  thrown  the  wrappings  of  a  cake  of  Peters' 
Chocolate  into  the  stream — and  it  was  verboten. 
With  the  piece  of  chocolate  in  my  hand  and  the 
wrapping  paper  sailing  down  the  stream  before 
me,  the  chain  of  damning  evidence  was  com- 
plete. But  what  police  officer  could  arrest  a 
young  lady  with  a  piece  of  chocolate  pursued 
by  its  wrappings?  So  I  reasoned,  and  so  I  ran. 
Military  rule  had  snatched  hatpins  out  of  my 
[59] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

unoffending  hats.  I  had  learned  not  to  do  this 
and  not  to  do  that,  and  to  always  step  aside  at 
the  approach  of  a  high-collared  officer.  In  Ger- 
many one  does  instinctively  what  one  is  ex- 
pected to  do,  like  a  well-disciplined  automat.  I 
had  learned  by  heart  the  terrible  story  of  the 
Berliner  who  was  drowned,  although  he  was  a 
champion  swimmer,  because  he  had  accidentally 
fallen  into  a  river  where  it  was  verboten  to 
swim!  The  military  atmosphere  of  Fortress 
Monroe  set  in  motion  my  slumbering  awe,  and  it 
was  not  until  we  had  poked  our  inquisitive  noses 
into  every  corner  of  the  impressive  pile  that  I 
realised  that  it  was  not  "forbidden"  to  walk  on 
the  grass,  to  pick  the  flowers,  to  stare  at  the  bat- 
teries, to  photograph  the  moat,  to  lounge  under 
the  trees  or  to  engage  the  sentry  in  conversation. 
Military  rule  in  America  means  spick-and-span 
order,  brisk  obedience  and  good  behaviour,  but 
it  goes  on  the  principle  that  we  are  all  well- 
behaved  until  we  prove,  by  blowing  up  the  fort 
and  stepping  on  the  flag,  that  we  are  not.  No 
one  base  enough  to  betray  such  trust  had  ap- 
peared in  the  vicinity  of  Fortress  Monroe  when 
we  were  there,  for  a  brave  flag  rattled  crisply 
over  the  ramparts.  The  huge  disappearing  guns 
looked  formidable  enough  to  have  shattered  any 
enemy,  but  we  gazed  at  them  with  dubious  en- 
[60] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

thusiasm,  knowing  that  the  inventors  of  verboten 
and  hate  were  concentrating  on  still  larger  and 
more  powerful  guns. 

The  towering  Hotel  Chamberlain  would 
make  an  excellent  target,  and  no  camouflage  in 
the  world  could  disguise  its  pinnacles  and  sun 
parlours  as  a  mountain  or  as  an  innocent  forest 
of  young  trees.  So  it  is  written  in  the  contract 
which  permitted  the  building  of  so  conspicuous 
a  landmark  within  a  stone's  throw  of  a  great  fort, 
that  in  case  a  hostile  fleet  should  approach  the 
Virginia  coast  the  Chamberlain  must  be  de- 
stroyed. Then  the  fat  ladies  in  rockers  and  the 
sweet  young  girls  and  the  white-duck  officers 
must  vacate  for  a  stern  necessity,  and  there  will 
vanish  from  our  leading  magazines  a  familiar, 
gay  advertisement  and  the  ravings  of  an  inspired 
press  agent. 

We  did  not  stop  to  have  lunch  at  the  Cham- 
berlain, but  boarded  an  electric  trolley  and  rode 
decorously,  in  spite  of  warnings  to  "keep  head 
and  limbs  inside  of  car,"  to  Newport  News.  I 
can  not  understand  why  the  Newport  News 
Electric  Railway  Company  should  be  so  suspi- 
cious of  the  self-control  of  its  passengers.  As 
far  as  I  know,  it  is  not  the  usual  thing  anywhere 
in  America  to  ride  with  one's  limbs  (the  deli- 
cacy of  it!)  dangling  from  trolley  car  windows! 
[61] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Our  progress  lay  across  historic  ground,  so 
that  when  I  try  to  chronicle  the  advance  of  the 
electric  car  and  the  sequence  of  dates,  I  feel  that 
it  would  be  an  easier  matter  to  write  the  history 
of  the  United  States,  and  be  done  with  it.  For 
we  passed  through  Hampton,  Kecoughtan  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  where  John  Smith  and 
the  hungry  idealists  who  had  ventured  into  the 
wilderness  with  him  received  hospitality  at  the 
hands  of  the  "terrible  savage."  A  son  of  the 
famous  chief  Powhatan  was  the  host  on  that 
occasion.  When  one  considers  the  matter  in 
the  light  of  a  neutral  mind,  the  Indians  always 
were  hospitable  until  the  white  men  took  ad- 
vantage of  their  simplicity;  that,  as  the  Irish- 
woman said,  was  how  the  fight  began.  When- 
ever I  feel  that  I  have  caught  the  national  habit 
and  am  screaming  in  imitation  of  an  American 
eagle,  when  I  feel  that  my  spirit  needs  chasten- 
ing and  my  pride  needs  chastisement,  I  con- 
sider the  American  Indian.  The  story  of  his 
destruction  is  as  terrible  as  the  tragedy  of  Israel. 
Kecoughtan,  the  hospitable  settlement  on  the 
banks  of  the  Hampton  River,  was  attacked  by 
Lieutenant  General  Gates  in  1610  to  avenge  the 
death  of  a  colonist.  Fourteen  of  the  unsuspect- 
ing Indian  inhabitants  were  killed,  and  Gates 
saw  to  it  that  the  survivors  abandoned  their  vil- 
[62] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

lage.  This  was  the  punishment  inflicted  upon 
the  very  Indians  who  had  saved  the  first  English 
settlers  from  starvation  only  three  years  before! 
The  law  of  compensation  is  sometimes  en- 
forced, by  destiny,  by  nature  or  by  man.  If 
Chief  Pochins'  people  could  have  foreseen  that 
a  great  Indian  and  Negro  college  would  rise 
from  the  ashes  of  their  wigwams,  their  bitter- 
ness might  have  been  less  poignant.  The  white 
man  made  restitution  in  1868,  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  later,  when  General  Samuel  Arm- 
strong established  Hampton  Institute.  We 
should  have  left  the  decorous  trolley  car  to  pay 
our  respects  to  an  institution  that  has  given  the 
hand  of  encouragement  and  practical  aid  to  over 
a  thousand  Indians  and  to  more  than  eight  thou- 
sand negroes.  We  are  ashamed  of  ourselves 
now  for  not  stopping,  since  the  gate  was  open 
and  the  mere  passing  through  it  would  have 
been  a  simple  pilgrimage  compared  to  some  that 
have  been  made  to  Hampton  from  the  far  ends 
of  America  and  Africa  by  Indians  and  negroes, 
poor,  uneducated  and  racially  at  a  disadvantage, 
who  have  somehow  heard  that  there  is  help  for 
them  there.  But  we  caught  only  a  glimpse  of 
the  Institute  buildings,  buildings  which  were 
built  and  "sung  up"  by  the  hands  and  the  planta- 
tion voices  of  the  students.  We  remembered  the 
[63] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Hampton  Jubilee  Singers,  those  short  and  tall, 
fat  and  lean,  sombre  and  good-natured  darkies 
who  sang  beautiful  negro  songs,  camp  meeting 
"revivals"  and  heart-touching  plantation  melo- 
dies in  the  summer  hotels  and  boarding-houses 
of  ten  years  ago.  Their  sweet  singing  built  Vir- 
ginia Hall  at  Hampton  Institute  just  as  the  songs 
they  sang  may  some  day  build  the  characteristic 
music  of  America. 

The  trolley  car  passed  so  many  interesting 
things  on  the  way  to  Newport  News  that  while 
I  had  no  desire  to  swing  my  feet  out  of  the  win- 
dow, I  was  tempted  to  hang  my  head  out,  like 
the  Wolf  in  Little  Red  Riding  Hood,  "all  the 
better  to  see  with,  my  dear."  The  military  at- 
mosphere still  prevailed,  Civil  War  veterans 
decorating  each  street  corner  and  proving  by 
their  brisk  bearing  that  you  can  be  a  very  young 
fellow  at  seventy-five.  Older  people  of  twenty 
or  forty  or  thereabouts  passed,  carrying  strings 
of  fish.  Indeed  the  whole  atmosphere  of  Hamp- 
ton and  Phoebus  is  flavoured,  commercially  and 
atmospherically,  with  fish.  The  tourist  who 
dines  for  pleasure  and  not  simply  for  nourish- 
ment can  satisfy  his  fastidious  appetite  anywhere 
along  the  peninsula  with  porgies  and  pompano, 
hogfish,  mackerel  and  delicate  butterfish,  and  if 
he  likes  oysters  and  is  enough  of  a  connoisseur 

[64] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

to  know  the  difference  between  "just  an  oyster" 
and  a  Virginia  oyster,  he  will  make  loving  pil- 
grimages from  restaurant  to  restaurant  to  sample 
the  delicious  Lynnhaven,  the  succulent  Mob  jack 
Bay,  the  juicy  York  River  and  the  tender  James 
River.  Nor  does  he  have  to  consult  his  calendar 
before  he  begins  his  feasting  to  make  sure  that 
there  is  a  letter  "r"  tucked  away  in  the  name  of 
the  month,  for  he  can  buy  oysters  fresh  from  the 
oyster  beds,  shucked  at  Hampton  and  as  innocu- 
ous as  morning  dew.  The  crab  factories  along 
the  water-front  are  going  to  be  responsible  in 
the  dim  future  for  some  strange  archaeological 
mistakes,  since  the  mounds  of  discarded  crab 
shells  are  rising  higher  and  higher,  veritable 
skeleton  pyramids  which  will  baffle  the  future 
professor  into  making  the  absurd  statement  that 
the  Virginians  of  the  twentieth  century  lived  en- 
tirely upon  the  meat  of  crabs  and  built  their 
cities  atop  the  refuse  of  their  feasts. 

The  puritanical  trolley  turned  aside  at  Hamp- 
ton and  followed  the  line  of  the  shore  all  the  way 
to  Newport  News,  passing  rows  and  rows  of 
suburban  cottages  built  on  a  geometric  plan  that 
makes  the  neighbourhood  about  as  picturesque 
and  appealing  as  a  concentration  camp.  We 
turned  away  from  the  hideous  procession  of  art 
nouveau  villas  and  looked  out  at  the  smiting  blue 

[65] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

of  Hampton  Roads,  as  calm  and  unruffled  as  if 
the  Monitor  and  Merrimac  had  never  blazed 
away  at  each  other  and  settled  the  destiny  of  a 
nation  on  its  placid  surface.  The  two  prehis- 
toric ironclads  met  just  off  Sewall's  Point  and 
pursued  each  other  like  spitting  dragons  from 
their  starting  place  to  Old  Point  Comfort,  and 
then  battled  furiously  all  the  way  back  to  New- 
port News  again,  crowds  of  people  following 
them  along  the  shore,  like  English  rowing  en- 
thusiasts pursuing  two  racing  shells  along  the 
banks  of  the  Thames.  And  at  the  end,  although 
the  Merrimac  was  perhaps  technically  victori- 
ous, the  fight  was  a  draw.  The  Monitor  won  a 
moral  victory  for  the  Union,  and  the  evacuation 
of  Norfolk  before  McClellan's  advancing  army 
soon  followed. 

At  Newport  News  we  tried  to  break  into  the 
Newport  News  Shipbuilding  Company's  pre- 
cincts, finding  open  hostility  and  undisguised 
distrust  at  the  gates.  It  was  Saturday  afternoon 
and  the  workmen  had  left  the  yards,  but  we  ex- 
plained to  the  gentleman  who  acted  as  sentry  for 
the  company  that  we  wanted  to  "wander  about 
and  watch  the  sun  go  down."  If  we  had  said 
that  we  wanted  to  place  a  ton  of  high  explosives 
under  the  enormous  hull  of  the  nearly  com- 
pleted Mississippi,  he  could  not  have  been 
[66] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

more  sceptical  of  our  intentions.  We  had  to 
produce  letters  from  our  publisher  and  the  dis- 
tinguished army  officer's  introduction,  fortu- 
nately preserved  for  just  such  an  emergency,  be- 
fore he  would  let  us  in.  And  he  explained, 
rather  peevishly,  that  he  was  "tired  anyway," 
for  the  men  had  been  paid  off  that  day,  and  one 
hundred  thousand  dollars  had  passed  from  the 
money-till  of  the  Newport  News  Shipbuilding 
Company  into  the  pockets  of  its  seven  thousand 
employes  between  noon  and  a  quarter  to  one 
o'clock. 

"I  take  it  on  my  own  shoulders,"  the  weary 
person  said  as  he  opened  the  office  door  and 
waved  us  toward  the  yard,  "to  let  you  look  at  the 
sunset  from  these  premises.  You  have  strange 
tastes.  If  you  do  any  harm,  I  shall  blow  out 
my  brains." 

"We  wore  him  down,"  I  said  triumphantly, 
as  we  hurried  away. 

"Wore  him  down!"  Allan  shouted.  "Nothing 
of  the  sort.    He  was  worn  down  already." 

But  I  insisted  that  we  had  won  a  triumph  over 
authority,  for  the  great  yards  were  deserted  and 
the  prodigious  hull  of  the  U.  S.  S.  Mississippi, 
scarlet  and  magnificent,  towered  directly  over 
our  heads.  We  had  paused  to  read  Hunting- 
[67] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

ton's  pledge,  written  on  a  bronze  tablet  at  the 
yard  entrance: 

"We  shall  build  good  ships 
At  a  profit  if  we  can 
At  a  loss  if  we  must 
But  always  good  ships." 

And  the  Mississippi  seems  to  have  been  as 
good  as  his  word,  for  when  she  was  launched  a 
month  later  she  was  a  sight  to  warm  the  cockles 
of  any  shipbuilder's  heart.  The  sun  set  oblig- 
ingly just  behind  her,  and  we  lingered  through 
a  long  twilight  in  the  deserted  yards  where  the 
clatter  and  roar  of  machinery  had  given  way  to 
a  profound  silence,  where  only  our  small  voices 
echoed  faintly,  where  the  swarming  labourers' 
tools  had  been  laid  down,  as  if  forever,  where 
the  great  unfinished  ships  were  caught  in  a  mesh 
of  steel  girders  and  wooden  beams,  where  the 
furnaces  and  forges  glowed  dimly  and  the  high 
roofs  of  the  machine  shops  were  filling  slowly 
with  shadows,  where  there  was  a  mysterious 
cessation  of  violent  activity,  a  hush,  as  if  the 
building  of  the  world  had  been  delayed  and  the 
builders  had  been  called  away  to  some  tranquil- 
lity, some  peace,  some  rest  from  the  gigantic 
labour,  following  the  sun  down  the  other  side  of 
the  globe. 

[68] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

We  returned  to  Norfolk  in  a  swift  packet, 
crossing  the  wide  stretch  of  tranquil  water 
through  a  splendid  flood  of  moonlight  that  filled 
the  bowl  of  the  world  with  quicksilver.  We 
were  alone  on  deck  except  for  a  mysterious  and 
romantic  young  woman  who  looked  like  ah  F. 
F.  V.  and  was  dressed  in  rags.  Bareheaded,  she 
stood  by  the  rail,  looking  into  the  face  of  the 
white  moon,  and  she  was  so  pathetically  lovely 
and  forlorn  that  Allan  grew  preoccupied  and 
sighed  like  a  furnace.  I  thought  of  offering  her 
my  extra  coat,  but  the  impulse  died  when  I  saw 
the  haughty  tilt  of  her  fine  head.  One  would 
as  soon  have  thought  of  offering  an  undershirt 
to  the  Queen  of  England.  We  pitied  her,  Allan 
for  her  tattered  beauty,  I  for  her  proximity  to 
pneumonia,  all  the  way  back  to  Norfolk. 

When  we  got  to  the  Monticello  we  went  to 
our  rooms  to  wash  away  the  disturbing  memory. 
My  laundry,  which  I  had  entrusted  to  the  hotel 
with  entreaties  written  on  the  list  to  "return 
positively  Saturday  night"  had  kept  its  promise 
and  was  lying  on  my  bed,  done  up  in  paper 
wrappings  and  packed  in  a  box  as  if  it  were 
priceless  raiment  laundered  by  a  modern  Sans- 
Gene. 

"Hello!"  I  called  into  the  next  room  to  Allan. 
[69] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

"Here's  the  laundry.  We  can  go  on  to  Wilming- 
ton to-morrow,  if  you  say." 

"Hurrah!"  Allan  sang,  appearing  in  the  door 
with  his  hair  standing  on  end  and  most  of  his 
face  buried  in  a  towel.  "Now  I  can  have  a  clean 
shirt.    I'll  dress  for  dinner." 

I  opened  the  box,  and  there  in  mounds  of  pink 
tissue  I  saw  what  had  been  my  linen  and  Allan's, 
mutilated,  transformed,  stiffened  beyond  sem- 
blance to  any  earthly  thing,  blue  as  a  cloudless 
sky,  degraded.  The  ribbons  had  become  ropes, 
the  lace  had  taken  on  the  horrible  quality  of 
chenille  curtains,  the  buttons  were  flattened  into 
oblivion.  They  cracked  as  I  lifted  them  out — 
shirtwaists,  petticoats,  silk  shirts,  stockings — 

"All  ruined!"  I  wailed,  suddenly  falling  in  a 
heap  on  the  bed;  "all  ruined,  and  I  have  so — 
little!" 

Allan  put  his  hand  on  my  shoulder  and  patted 
sympathetically. 

"I'll  buy  more." 

"You  can't.  They're  ruined.  They've  been 
run  under  a  steam  roller."  I  tossed  a  shower 
of  pink  tissue  wrappings  up  in  the  air.  "Tissue 
paper — string — pins — and  four  pounds  of  starch 
— I  could  kill  somebody!" 

Allan  raised  his  eyes  and  I  saw  a  memory  in 
[70] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

them.    "Suppose  you  were  in  rags,"  he  began. 

"Suppose—" 

But  I  had  jumped  up  and  was  already  pow- 
dering my  nose.  "Heaven  save  us,"  1^  gasped 
through  my  tears;  "who's  complaining?" 


[71] 


CHAPTER  IV 

ON    TO  WILMINGTON,   A   WRECK,   AND  A  LITTLE 
DISSERTATION   ON  PULLMAN   CARS 

E  had  breakfast  at  half-past  six  with  the 
mistaken  intention  of  being  on  time 
for  an  eight  o'clock  train  to  Wilming- 
ton. From  the  dining-room  windows 
of  the  Monticello,  while  a  sleepy  waiter  served 
us  coffee  'n  rolls,  we  saw  the  moon  set  and  the  sun 
rise  over  Norfolk  Harbor.  It  was  all  very 
beautiful  and  rather  an  adventure  for  me  for  I 
almost  never  see  a  sunrise. 

Allan  had  carefully  paid  the  bill  while  I  was 
dressing,  so  there  was  no  excuse  to  unburden  my 
laundry  grievance  to  the  night-clerk.  Besides, 
there  was  small  hope  of  redress,  as  I  was  wear- 
ing one  of  the  shirtwaists.  I  had  carefully  con- 
cealed it  under  my  coat,  but  its  appalling  starchi- 
ness  gave  me  a  pouter  pigeon  expression.  Every 
time  I  moved  my  degraded  and  transformed 
lingerie  cracked  like  a  pistol  shot.  So  I  left  the 
Monticello  with  black  looks,  forgetting  how 
much  I  had  liked  the  coffee,  the  orchestra  and 
my  comfortable  bed. 

[72] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

We  were  ferried  over  to  our  train  in  a  barge 
drawn,  or  rather  nosed  ahead,  by  a  tug.  The 
mysterious  lady  who  had  puzzled  us  so  the  night 
before  crossed  with  us.  She  was  still  bare- 
headed and  wore  the  thinnest  sort  of  a  meagre 
black  jacket  which  was  too  long  in  the  waist 
and  too  short  in  the  sleeves.  And  this  time  she 
carried  a  book  and  a  travelling  bag,  although 
what  on  earth  she  could  have  put  in  it  baffled  me 
utterly.  She  sat  very  quietly  while  we  admired 
the  tilt  of  her  fine  head  and  her  really  beauti- 
ful profile.  She  seemed  to  be  perfectly  indiffer- 
ent to  the  stares  of  the  men  and  the  curiosity  of 
the  women  as  if  it  were  the  usual  thing  for  young 
beauties  with  white  hands  and  threadbare 
clothes  to  go  about  alone,  hatless,  and  stagger- 
ing under  a  heavy  travelling  bag. 

"She  is  either  a  fanatic,  a  criminal  or  an 
actress,"  Allan  decided  after  a  long  stare. 

But  I  thought  secretly  that  she  was  more  prob- 
ably a  young  person  with  "ideas,"  one  of  those 
heroic  Joans  of  modern  society  who  believe  in 
turning  the  conventions  inside  out.  I  knew  that 
if  I  should  ask  her  why  she  affected  a  flutter  of 
rags  at  the  elbows  she  would  answer  quietly, 
"Because  I  am  a  free  spirit,"  or  some  utter  rot 
like  that.  We  can  be  as  eccentric  as  we  like  as 
long  as  our  eccentricity  is  invisible.  It  is  not 
[73] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

generally  understood  that  the  invisible  kind  of 
eccentricity  is  dangerous.  No  one  would  think 
of  staring  at  a  sober,  unobtrusive  passerby  whose 
brain,  nicely  hidden  from  public  scrutiny,  is 
plotting  the  overthrow  of  a  government  or  the 
assassination  of  a  king.  But. let  us  go  harmlessly 
barefoot,  or  take  a  naive  fancy  to  walking 
backward,  and  we  become  objects  of  suspicion 
and  aversion.  The  mysterious  lady,  I  felt  cer- 
tain, was  neither  a  criminal,  a  fanatic  or  an 
actress,  and  she  was  probably  reading  "Elsie 
Dinsmore." 

It  was  still  very  early  when  the  ferry  drew 
away  from  Norfolk  and,  poked  by  the  energetic 
little  tug,  edged  across  the  harbour  to  the  wharf 
where  our  train  was  waiting  for  us.  The  light 
was  crisp  and  brilliant;  it  gilded  the  breasts  and 
wings  of  wheeling  gulls  that  followed  us,  and 
turned  our  wake  into  a  churning  froth  of  gold. 
We  crossed  the  bow  of  a  big,  grey  naval  collier 
coming  down  from  the  Yard  at  Portsmouth  on 
her  way  to  sea.  I  don't  suppose  she  is  the  tallest 
ship  in  the  world,  but  she  towered  over  us  like 
a  thin-sliced  skyscraper,  the  sun  glinting  along 
her  sides  and  rimming  the  sails  and  spars  with  a 
fiery  glitter.  How  beautiful  everything  was! 
Fresh,  boisterous,  golden  morning,  the  sparkle 
of  the  sea  and  the  heady  swell  of  it!  Looking 
[74] 


LCC^n, 


IT    WAS    STILL    VERY    EARLY    WHEN    THE    FERRY    DREW 
AWAY    FROM    NORFOLK 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

back,  we  had  a  last  glimpse  of  Norfolk  and  the 
familiar  Anheuser-Busch  sign  which  must  be 
such  a  source  of  misery  and  bitter  suggestion  to 
the  wet  voters  of  Virginia. 

The  mysterious  lady  and  her  travelling  bag 
followed  us  into  our  Pullman  and  aroused  the 
porter  to  a  frenzy  of  curiosity  by  looking  like 
a  waif  and  behaving  like  a  languid  princess. 
She  read  and  yawned  delicately  and  read  again, 
with  her  tattered  shoes  displayed  on  a  cushion, 
and  the  porter  was  so  stunned  that  he  offered 
her  a  paper  bag  for  the  hat  that  she  didn't  have. 
I  thought  of  bribing  him  to  find  out  what  she 
was  reading,  but  I  was  so  afraid  that  it  might 
be  Schopenhauer  and  not  "Elsie  Dinsmore"  that 
I  hesitated  too  long. 

At  a  small  way-station  not  far  from  Norfolk 
she  got  off,  and  walked  straight  into  the  arms 
of  a  good-looking  boy  who  was  waiting  for  her 
on  the  station  platform.  He  was  dressed  for  all 
the  world  like  a 

"Ah  do  declare!"  chortled  the  porter,  who 
had  pressed  his  nose  flatter  than  ever  against  the 
window-pane.    "Foh  de  Lo'd's  sake!" 

"Movies!"  I  said. 

"Ah  do  declare,"  snickered  the  porter,  "he's 
done  dress'  up  like  a  cowboy.     Jes'  foh  all  de 
world  like  one,  yessah.    Foh  de  Lo'd's  sake!" 
[75] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

"Movies,"  said  Allan  disgustedly. 

Perhaps.  But  I  would  rather  believe  that 
she  had  travelled  the  world  over,  hatless,  to  kiss 
him  in  the  shadow  of  his  sombrero,  for  it  was 
big  enough  for  two. 

After  that  we  edged  around  the  Dismal 
Swamp  for  miles.  The  trees  are  gaunt  and  bone- 
grey  as  skeletons,  but  they  spread  tenaciously  at 
the  roots,  like  giants  with  their  feet  spread  wide 
apart,  and  get  a  foothold  in  the  shallow  water. 
I  had  expected  to  see  Spanish  moss  swinging 
like  witches'  hair  from  the  branches,  but 
there  was  none.  Festooned  and  looping  vines 
hung  in  tangled  confusion,  and  the  dropsical 
trunks  of  the  pallid  trees  were  grotesque  and 
melancholy,  but  it  was  not  the  lush  and  tropic 
forest  I  had  pictured.  I  could  not  believe  that 
the  Virginia  soil  was  productive,  or  conceive  of 
the  inhabitants  being  anything  but  web-footed, 
if  all  the  rest  of  the  State  was  like  this — an  end- 
less chain  of  puddles  and  tangled  swamps  laced 
with  vines  and  clogged  with  bush  growth. 

But  there  are  fourteen  millionaire  farmers  in 
Norfolk  County,  Virginia,  and  farmers  can't 
become  millionaires  without  farms.  (Unless 
they  go  into  munitions — but  that,  of  course,  is 
outside  my  contention!)  The  eight  o'clock  train 
to  Wilmington  must  make  a  point  of  avoiding 
[76] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

the  fertile  miles  of  Norfolk  County's  famous 
truck-farms.  Simply  because  Tom  Moore  and 
Longfellow  wrote  ballads  about  the  Dismal 
Swamp,  tourists  are  supposed  to  hanker  for  a 
glimpse  of  its  ashen  desolation.  I,  for  one, 
would  have  preferred  to  see  the  checkerboard 
landscape  where  the  fruits  and  vegetables  we 
buy  in  New  York  at  the  early  morning  market 
are  picked  "the  day  before." 

The  Virginia  farmer  has  every  facility  for 
selling  his  crops;  he  has  an  elaborate  network  of 
railways  at  his  disposal  and  a  great  port  at  his 
very  front  door.  North,  South,  East  and  West 
are  open  to  him  and  his  is  the  most  spectacular 
market-place  in  the  world.  The  next  time  I  go 
to  market  (I  don't  go  now,  for  I  am  raising  my 
own  vegetables  in  the  tennis-court),  I  shall  re- 
member the  sunny  beauty  of  a  Virginian  day 
and  perhaps  marketing  will  take  on  romance 
from  the  memory.  Who  knows,  if  I  am  lucky 
I  may  buy  one  of  Upton's  potatoes!  Upton  is 
the  Virginian  potato  king.  He  supplies  the  local 
farmers  with  fertiliser  and  seed;  he  sells  the 
crop  and  divides  the  profit.  It  has  been  darkly 
but  perhaps  not  truthfully  hinted  that  by  stor- 
ing the  potatoes  in  his  warehouses  at  Norfolk 
he  has  "cornered"  the  local  potato  market.  At 
any  rate,  potatoes  are  making  him  rich,  and  I 
[77] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

could  not  help  feeling  chagrined  that  the  value 
of  a  potato  is  higher  than  the  value  of  a  word! 
Another  Norfolk  man,  Mr.  Thomas  Rowland, 
turned  back  the  rich  Virginia  soil  and  discov- 
ered an  agricultural  gold  nugget  in  the  humble 
peanut.  He  staked  out  the  first  claims  a  long 
time  ago  when  peanuts  were  popularly  despised 
as  nigger-food.  Although  the  African  slaves 
had  for  years  planted  their  own  peanut  fields, 
no  one  except  Mr.  Rowland  realised  that  there 
was  any  commercial  value  in  the  little  "hard- 
shelled  potatoes."  Mr.  Rowland  was  a  man 
with  a  vision,  and  like  most  visionaries  he  was 
misunderstood.  He  believed  in  peanuts  and 
eventually  became  the  little  father  of  the  indus- 
try. I  wonder  whether  he  dreamed  of  peanut 
brittle  and  peanut  butter  and  a  thousand  and 
one  other  peanut  delicacies?  I  wonder  whether 
he  foresaw  the  amazing  popularity  of  the  corner 
peanut  stand  and  heard  the  chirruping  steam 
whistle,  the  thin,  persistent  note  which  has  come 
to  mean  "hot-roasted  peanuts"  all  over  the 
world?  If  you  are  sentimental  about  such 
things,  doff  your  hat  to  Mr.  Rowland !  I  did  not 
know  until  I  was  decidedly  grown  up  that  pea- 
nuts grow  under  ground,  and  it  was  still  more 
surprising  to  discover  that  the  vines  are  cut  and 
stacked  around  poles  for  all  the  world  like 
[78] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

miniature  copies  of  those  Austrian  hay-mounds 
one  sees  in  Karnten  and  sometimes  in  the  Tyrol. 

The  train  to  Wilmington  ambled  along  like  a 
Virginia  creeper  as  far  as  Eura  and  there  it 
came  to  a  dead  stop  for  an  hour.  The  porter 
and  the  conductor  disappeared,  and  save  for  one 
other  traveller,  who  was  mercifully  sound 
asleep,  we  were  left  alone  in  the  Pullman.  A 
drowsy,  stupefying  calm  settled  down  on  us.  We 
read  our  newspapers  because  there  was  nothing 
to  see  at  Eura  except  the  station  hogs,  and  they 
had  so  little  regard  for  their  own  lives,  or  so 
great  a  faith  in  our  permanence,  that  they  runted 
under  the  car  wheels.  At  first  we  were  sustained 
by  the  thought  that  we  were  waiting  on  a  switch 
for  some  thundering  express  train  to  pass  on  its 
way  to  Norfolk.  When  that  hope  died,  I  began 
to  wonder  whether  we  hadn't  perhaps  been 
"slipped."  I  remembered  the  horrible  occasion 
in  England  when  I  had  fancied  that  I  was  going 
from  Liverpool  to  London  and  had  had  the  poor 
luck  to  be  in  the  Warwick  car.  The  express 
had  roared  on  and  the  "slipped"  car,  unhooked 
in  the  great  steel  comet's  full  flight,  had  clicked 
into  the  Warwick  station  all  on  its  own. 

"Warwick,  madam." 

And  a  leisurely  person  opened  the  compart- 
ment door  and  took  my  bags. 
[79] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

"But  I'm  on  the  London  Express!" 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  madam.  This  is  the  slip 
carriage  for  Warwick." 

On  the  platform  I  stared  wildly  about  for  the 
rest  of  the  train.  A  puff  of  smoke  on  the  horizon 
showed  me  where  it  was. 

"Slip  carriage — "  I  began  feebly. 

"Yes,  madam." 

"It  was,  what  d'you  say,  slipped  on  purpose?" 

The  leisurely  person  had  looked  at  me  with  a 
faint  suspicion  of  pity. 

"Oh,  you  were  going  to  London?"  He  al- 
lowed himself  to  smile.  "It's  'ard,  it  is  that,  for 
foreigners  to  find  their  way  ab'at.  If  you  spoke 
English  now — it  wouldn't  'ave  happened." 

He  picked  up  the  last  aitch  with  care  and 
turned  his  back  on  me.     .     .     . 

"Have  we  been  slipped?"  I  asked  Allan,  when 
Eura  had  become  a  fixture. 

The  other  passenger,  who  turned  out  later  to 
be  a  lumber  merchant  from  Norfolk,  woke  out 
of  an  uncomfortable  and  crumpled  slumber  and 
glanced  at  his  watch. 

"It  must  be  a  wreck,"  he  said.  "There  usually 
is  one." 

"Usually!" 

"Well,  nearly  always.    I'll  go  out  and  see." 

He  had  a  nice  smile  and  endeared  himself  to 

[80] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

us  at  once  by  using  it.  "You  just  watch  that 
razor-back  hog  stroppin'  himself  on  the  fence 
until  I  come  back,"  he  said. 

We  waited,  while  the  hog  stropped.  And  sure 
enough,  it  was  a  wreck. 

"I  hope  you  brought  your  lunch,"  our  fellow- 
traveller  said,  appearing  in  the  doorway  again 
with  his  engaging  smile  in  action,  "for  we  are 
going  to  be  six  hours  late.  There  are  eight 
freight  cars  off  the  track,  all  smashed  to  a  tinder, 
up  yonder  a  mile  or  so.  I  don't  reckon  we'll 
move  on  for  some  time.  Would  you  like  to  walk 
ahead  and  see  the  wreck?" 

Apparently  no  one  could  tell  us  anything  more 
definite.  The  conductor,  whom  every  one  called 
Captain  Clarke  or,  popularly,  "Cap,"  was  sitting 
on  the  station  steps  with  'his  thumbs  hooked 
under  his  suspenders,  his  hat  on  the  back  of  his 
head  and  a  cheery  smile  for  every  one.  The 
engineer  was  taking  a  nap  on  the  cow-catcher, 
the  engine  puffed  slowly  with  a  thin  whistle, 
like  a  snoring  old  man,  and  the  Pullman  porter 
was  flirting  with  some  very  dark  ladies  in  the 
Jim-Crow  car.  So  we  started  on  foot  to  see  the 
wreck. 

All  the  inhabitants  of  Eura,  white  and  black, 
had  decided  to  do  the  same  thing  and  the  rail- 
road track  looked  like  a  promenade.     There 

[81] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

were  tall,  lanky  tar-heels  in  snuff-coloured 
jackets  and  mud-caked  shoes,  spitting  and  chew- 
ing rhythmically;  there  were  inconceivably 
ragged  negroes,  tiny,  barefooted  pickaninnies 
with  rolling  eyes  and  infectious  grins,  black 
women  with  babies  in  their  arms  striding  along 
the  tracks  with  the  curiously  free  gait  of  the 
African;  there  were  farmers,  hunters,  and  some 
solemn  white  boys  in  city  shoes  who  had  ap- 
parently come  from  Norfolk  on  our  train,  and, 
bringing  up  the  rear,  Allan,  the  lumber  mer- 
chant and  I.  We  all  trudged  toward  a  puff  of 
white  smoke  a  mile  and  a  half  away.  The  air 
was  delicious,  full  of  a  delicate,  heady  pine 
smell,  resinous  and  fresh,  and  the  sun  was  so 
warm  where  it  struck  across  my  shoulders  that 
I  had  to  take  off  my  fur  and  finally  my  coat. 
On  both  sides  of  the  track  a  forest  of  short-leaf 
pine  fringed  the  top  of  a  low  embankment.  We 
were  still  on  the  skirts  of  the  Dismal  Swamp,  a 
sandy  oasis  in  the  endless  stretches  of  water- 
soaked  land  between  Norfolk  and  Savannah. 

For  the  first  time  I  saw  cotton  growing. 
"Only  a  po'  little  bunch,"  our  Pullman  acquaint- 
ance apologised.  But  he  groped  through  a  wire 
fence  and  picked  a  stalk  of  the  pretty,  snowy 
stuff  for  me  to  wear  as  a  bouquet.  It  was 
thrilling  to  see  a  whole  field  of  cotton,  even  if 

[82] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

it  was  a  po'  little  bunch.  It  was  just  as  moving 
to  come  on  a  field  of  cotton  as  it  was  to  come  face 
to  face  with  the  Coliseum  for  the  first  time. 
Cotton  means  the  South,  the  romantic  and  allur- 
ing South,  just  as  the  Coliseum  means  old  Rome 
and  bloody  gladiators  and  rows  of  virgins  with 
their  thumbs  turned  down.  It  was  just  as  mov- 
ing to  hold  a  stalk  of  cotton,  dazzling  white,  be- 
tween my  fingers  as  it  was  to  find  an  asphodel  in 
the  Campagna.  And  I  shall  be  sorry  if  the  time 
ever  comes  when  there  is  nothing  I  will  not  have 
seen  that  can  make  me  feel  that  way! 

A  broken  shoe  on  the  driving  wheel,  what- 
ever that  is,  had  caused  the  accident,  and  as  the 
engineer  said,  it  was  some  smash!  He  was 
sitting  on  the  bank  near  the  track,  looking  shaken 
and  pale  and  contemplating  the  wreckage  with 
an  almost  malicious  pleasure.  He  had  been  in 
a  wreck,  he  had  saved  his  skin,  and,  believe  him, 
it  was  some  smash. 

"God  was  kind  to  the  live  stock,"  he  said 
morosely. 

And  God  had  been  kind.  The  engine  had 
ploughed  up  three  hundred  feet  of  track  into  a 
maize  of  twisted  rail  and  tinder-wood,  but  it 
still  stood  upright,  sunken  to  its  knees  in  sand 
and  wreckage.  Right  behind  it  there  was  a  box- 
car full  of  live-stock,  miraculously  right-side  up, 

[83] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

too.  Behind  that  the  eight  smashed  cars  lay 
sideways,  tipped  on  end,  spilled  into  the  ditch, 
split  open,  cracked,  splintered  and  pulverised. 

"If  you  don't  call  that  Providence,"  the  en- 
gineer demanded,  "what  on  earth  do  you  call 
it?" 

We  went  up  close  to  peer  between  the  slats  at 
the  huddled  cows,  the  grunting  pigs,  the 
stricken,  shivering  little  calves,  and  tried  to 
reach  their  soft,  moist  noses  with  handfuls  of 
grass.  I  began  to  wonder  why  they  had  been 
saved  at  all  since  they  were  on  their  way  to 
Norfolk  to  be  slaughtered.  There  is  a  story, 
you  remember,  about  a  man  who  was  being 
rushed  to  the  hospital — rushed  so  fast,  in  fact, 
that  the  ambulance  collided  with  a  fire  en- 
gine.    .     .     . 

Providence  had  been  generous.  No  one  was 
hurt  from  the  engineer  and  fireman  to  the  small- 
est, terrified  pink  and  black  pig.  But  the  solemn 
crowds  that  stood  along  the  track  contemplating 
the  spectacular  cataclysm  would  have  had  a 
much  better  time  if  some  one  had  been  obliging 
enough  to  break  his  head.  Even  mildly  exciting 
human  wreckage,  a  smashed  leg  or  an  arm, 
would  have  cheered  them  up.  It  was  too  blood- 
less. Otherwise  it  was  a  fine  wreck.  Vaguely 
disappointed,    armies    of    small    boys    pressed 

[84] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

around  the  engineer  and  probed  for  particu- 
lars. 

"Wa'nt  you  scairt?" 

"Didn't  it  bump  awful?" 

"Did  you  git  time  to  put  on  the  brakes?" 

The  engineer  glowered  at  them.  "I  told  you," 
he  said,  "it  was  a  smash.  I  didn't  know  nothin', 
I  just  jumped." 

One  small  boy,  freckled  beyond  recognition, 
bare-footed  and  wild-eyed,  had  more  imagina- 
tion than  any  of  us.  He  offered  a  sop  to  our 
thirst  for  horrors. 

"I  guess,"  he  said  slowly,  "I  guess  there's 
plenty  of  dead  men  under  them  cars — all 
smashed  to  pieces,  I  guess." 

We  left  the  crowd  still  staring  and  trudged 
back  the  long,  hot  mile  and  a  half  to  Eura  again. 
Captain  Clarke  was  sitting  where  we  had  left 
him  on  the  station  steps,  but  he  had  a  dinner- 
plate  on  his  knees,  and  oh,  Lord,  how  good  his 
dinner  looked!    He  waved  a  fork  at  us. 

"You'd  better  go  over  yonder  and  have  din- 
ner— that  farmhouse  behind  the  picket  fence, 
just  where  you  see  the  white  hog.  They'll  give 
you  something,  I  reckon.  We're  waiting  for 
the  wrecking  train.  I'll  call  you  when  they  let 
us  by.    Scat  now!" 

[85] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

"Can  you  give  us  dinner?"  we  asked  at  the 
farmhouse. 

And  heaven  be  praised  they  reckoned  they 
could.  We  were  shown  into  the  parlour  to  wait 
until  something  was  "warmed  up"  for  us.  It 
was  a  parlour  out  of  a  story  book,  and  we  sat 
in  silence  trying  to  control  our  expressions.  We 
had  not  believed  that  such  parlours  existed  be- 
low the  Mason-Dixon  line.  There  were  rows 
of  pink  conch  shells  on  the  mantel  shelf.  There 
was  an  organ.  And  a  framed  "What  is  Home 
Without  Mother."  Yes,  really!  And  crayon 
portraits  of  grandfather  and  grandmother, 
grandfather  whiskered  and  grandmother  terri- 
fied. While  we  waited  a  young  man  with  red 
hair  and  protruding  teeth  came  in  to  entertain 
us.  He  hoped  we  were  all  well  and  remarked 
that  the  mud  was  unusually  bad,  even  for  that 
time  of  year.  And  I  noticed,  mentally  putting 
my  hand  over  grandfather's  whiskers,  that  in 
twenty  years  the  red-headed  lisper  would  look 
exactly  like  the  crayon  portrait.  A  dejected 
white  hound  with  a  ponderous  and  very  plebeian 
tail  sat  in  the  middle  of  the  floor  and  whacked 
in  a  politely  bored  manner  while  we  discussed 
the  unseasonable  mud. 

Dinner  was  served  in  a  long  shed  behind  the 
house,  and  you  are  not  obliged  to  believe  me 
[86] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

when  I  tell  you  what  we  had  to  eat,  although  it 
is  the  gospel  truth.  We  had  smothered  chicken, 
roast  beef  and  corned  beef,  fresh  pork  and 
corned  pork;  we  had  turnip  salad  and  hot, 
mashed  turnip;  we  had  potatoes  and  biscuits, 
soused  hog's  head,  cheese,  corn-bread,  spoon- 
bread,  pickled  peaches,  beef  stew,  preserved 
fruit,  pound  cake  and  chowchow,  tea,  coffee 
and  milk,  beans  and  bacon.  We  began  in  the 
middle  and  ate  outward.  In  my  eagerness  and 
confusion  I  put  peaches  and  hog's  head  on  the 
same  plate  and  sugared  my  spoon-bread.  The 
chicken  was  cold  and  jellied;  in  time  I  aban- 
doned the  hog's  head  to  sample  it,  and  was  then 
so  intrigued  by  the  corned  pork  that  I  left  every- 
thing, even  a  small  beginning  in  beef  stew,  for 
pork  and  more  pork. 

"Oh,  Lord,"  I  said  devoutly,  putting  down  my 
knife  and  fork  long  enough  to  utter  thanks, 
"give  me  time  to  finish!" 

But  a  lanky  and  terrifically  whiskered  indi- 
vidual sent  at  top  speed  by  Cap'  Clarke  arrived 
in  a  breathless  condition  to  warn  us  that  the 
wreckers  had  come  and  that  our  train  was  going 
to  "move  on  up"  to  the  wreck. 

Allan  rose  with  a  groan,  and  somewhat  im- 
peded by  a  mouthful  of  soused  hog's  head,  asked 
"How  much?"  of  our  hostess. 
[87] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

For  such  a  Rabelaisian  feast  we  rather  ex- 
pected to  pay  dearly.  But  our  prodigal  hostess 
dropped  her  eyes  and  explained  that  fifty  cents 
was  what  she  usually  got.  We  didn't  wait  to 
discover  whether  she  considered  us  usual  or  un- 
usual guests,  but  paid  her  and  ran  through  the 
ankle-deep  mud  to  our  train. 

Captain  Clarke,  with  his  watch  in  his  hand 
and  one  foot  on  the  cow-catcher  in  an  attitude 
reminiscent  of  Du  Maurier's  "Trilby,"  waited 
until  we  had  swung  aboard  (very  figuratively 
speaking),  and  then,  with  dramatic  wiggle-wag- 
gles, signalled  to  the  engineer  to  "move  on  up" 
to  the  wreck. 

With  our  engine's  nose  touching  the  wrecked 
engine's  nose  so  that  they  looked  for  all  the 
world  like  a  pair  of  friendly  dogs,  we  came  to  a 
final  halt  and  were  transferred — on  foot,  of 
course — to  another  train  which  had  been  sent 
up  from  Rockymount  for  us.  Small,  wobbly 
bridges  were  laid  across  the  most  impassable 
parts  of  the  journey,  and  train  hands  were  sta- 
tioned every  few  yards  to  see  that  the  exhausted 
passengers  reached  the  emergency  train.  And 
by  this  time  it  was  hot,  hot!  Allan  and  the  per- 
spiring porter  staggered  under  two  of  our  suit- 
cases; I  manoeuvred  the  third.  First  I  bore  it 
with  my  left  hand;  then  I  set  it  down,  wiped 

[88] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

my  brow,  and  picked  it  up^again  with  my  right 
hand.  Then  I  stumbled  forward,  struggling  to 
lift  the  beastly  thing  with  both  hands.  And 
finally  when  strength  had  ebbed,  I  put  it  on  the 
ground  and  rolled  it  before  me  like  a  stevedore 
rolling  a  barrel.  The  wrecked  train  was  at  least 
a  mile  long;  it  curled  like  a  snake  around  an 
almost  imperceptible  bend  in  the  tracks  which 
the  porter  assured  us  was  the  most  dangerous 
curve  between  Norfolk  and  Wilmington. 

"We  gets  wrecked  just  heah  right  along,"  he 
said. 

And  when  pressed  for  details,  he  added  non- 
chalantly, "Oh,  most  every  week,"  which  did  not 
tend  to  cheer  us. 

Judging  from  what  I  saw  of  the  negroes  in  the 
South,  they  move  about  like  the  nomad  tribes  of 
Egypt.  I  cannot  imagine  how  they  are  able  to 
afford  the  dubious  luxury  of  Southern  travel, 
for  the  distances  are  enormous,  and  in  spite  of 
mileage  books,  which  are  supposed  to  reduce  the 
expense  of  long  journeys,  the  three-cent  miles 
are  ticked  off  at  an  alarming  speed.  When  we 
were  planning  our  trip  we  spoke  of  "running 
over  to  Tampa  from  Jacksonville,"  or,  blithely, 
of  "stopping  off  at  Georgetown  for  a  few  hours 
on  our  way  from  Wilmington  to  Charleston." 
But  a  day-time  journey  between  any  of  the 
[89] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Southern  seaports  is  an  all-day  journey,  and  at 
the  end  of  our  tour  we  found  that  we  had  spent 
exactly  twelve  days  in  Pullman  cars  and  a  week 
at  sea!  Connections  were  dubious,  trains  were 
late,  and  time  and  time  again  we  found  it  im- 
possible to  buy  parlour-car  reservations  before 
actually  boarding  our  train,  when  we  had  to  wait 
anxiously  until  the  porter  had  satisfied  himself 
that  there  were,  or  were  not,  two  vacancies.  All 
of  the  express  trains  came  from  the  North, 
"booked  through"  to  the  resorts  of  Southern 
Florida,  and  we  usually  made  our  entrance  into 
a  Pullman  already  crowded  with  Northern 
tourists  who  had  settled  themselves,  in  any  chair 
at  all,  to  play  cards,  to  sleep  or  to  knit.  Our  ar- 
rival always  created  a  feeling  of  aversion,  more 
or  less  openly  expressed.  We  felt  like  social 
outcasts  while  the  spirited  and  determined 
home-towners  were  being  removed,  card  tables, 
knitting,  fruit  baskets,  newspapers  and  all,  from 
chairs  not  legally  their  own  and  deposited  in 
others  to  make  way  for  us.  When  a  Pullman 
"sleeper"  is  made  up  for  the  day  there  is  no  room 
for  luggage;  there  are  no  racks  to  accommodate 
it,  and  it  is  next  to  impossible  to  squeeze  a  suit- 
case under  the  heavily-cushioned  chairs.  The 
system  makes  one  long  for  the  European  com- 
partment car  which  is  provided  with  a  corridor 
[90] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

where  cramped  and  weary  passengers  can  stretch 
themselves,  and  even  indulge  in  a  brisk  little 
promenade  without  having  to  reel  up  and  down 
an  aisle  which  is  cluttered  with  travelling  bags, 
fat  cushions  and  an  intricate  confusion  of  human 
legs  and  feet.  I  would  rather  sit  up  all  night 
than  undress  behind  the  revealing  curtains  of  a 
lower  berth,  not  to  speak  of  attempting  the  acro- 
batic contortions  necessary  to  an  upper-berth 
disrobing!  Is  anything  saved  by  the  system  ex- 
cept perhaps  a  surrender  to  the  aesthetic  needs 
of  travellers?  There  is  nothing  more  humiliat- 
ing than  trying  to  manage  hooks  and  eyes  when 
you  are  wrapped  in  a  green  curtain  and  tangled 
in  sheets  and  pillow  cases.  There  is  nothing 
more  damnable  than  washing  and  combing  be- 
fore a  mirror  which  is  coveted  by  twenty-five 
other  women.  Why  isn't  the  compartment  night- 
coach  possible  in  America?  We  boast  of  the 
speed,  efficiency,  dustlessness  and  safety  of  our 
railroads,  but  travelling  at  night  in  the  United 
States  is  made  a  degrading  and  tortuous  ex- 
perience. 

The  special  train  which  had  come  from 
Rockymount  had  no  Pullman  at  all.  The  ne- 
groes were  herded  into  one  car.  We  were 
herded  into  another  to  languish  in  the  fetid  at- 
mosphere of  po'  white  trash,  orange  peels,  pea- 
[91] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

nut  shells  and  babies.  The  windows  were 
hermetically  sealed  and  resisted  the  apoplectic 
efforts  of  Allan  and  the  lumber  merchant.  We 
had  been  delayed  for  five  hours,  and  should  have 
been  nearing  the  end  of  our  journey  if  Fate,  or 
that  dangerous  curve,  had  not  arranged  that  we 
should  travel  through  North  Carolina  in  the  aft- 
ernoon instead  of  the  morning.  As  the  hot  sun 
slanted  lower  and  lower  into  the  West,  it  rimmed 
the  endless  forests  of  short-leaf  pine  with  gold 
and  cast  long  shadows,  grotesque  and  contorted, 
across  the  shrub.  Now  and  then  the  monotony 
of  the  pine  forests  gave  way  to  groves  of  green 
trees  or  to  wide  fields  of  cotton,  and  because  I 
had  been  taught  to  recognise  the  leguminous 
peanut,  I  saw  whole  acres  given  over  to  its  culti- 
vation. 

In  Rockymount  we  were  in  the  centre  of  a 
great  tobacco-growing  country.  We  were  told 
by  a  polite  but  uncertain  young  man  at  the  sta- 
tion that  we  could  get  a  train  on  to  Wilmington 
"somewhere  around  ten  o'clock,"  so  we  had  sup- 
per at  the  nearest  hotel,  which  lived  up  to  our 
idea  of  what  a  Southern  hotel  should  look  like 
by  carrying  its  portico  several  stories  high  and 
holding  it  aloft  with  slender,  white  pillars.  The 
dining-room  was  cool  and  clean  and  apparently 
patronised  exclusively  by  fat  travelling  sales- 
[92] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

men.  The  young  waitresses  wore  pretty  blue 
linen  dresses  and  seemed  possessed  of  a  fierce 
respectability.  The  lumber  merchant,  who  was 
still  with  us,  smiled  his  engaging  smile  and  de- 
scribed in  eloquent  Virginian  the  state  of  our 
appetites.  If  he  had  been  offering  to  elope  with 
the  haughty  blue-linen  waitress,  her  scorn  and 
indifference  could  not  have  been  surpassed.  She 
dropped  her  eyes,  passed  one  limp,  white  hand 
over  the  amazing  smoothness  of  her  pompadour 
and  ignored  the  jest. 

"Will  you  have  your  chicken  fried,"  she 
asked,  in  a  cold  voice,  "or  boiled?" 

"Boiled,"  said  the  lumber  merchant  briefly. 
And  his  smile  died  like  the  sun  going  behind  a 
cloud. 

After  dinner  we  walked  through  the  quiet, 
well-paved  streets  of  the  little  city.  A  white 
moon  sailed  high  behind  fleecy  clouds,  caught 
in  an  enormous  hoop  of  opalescent  light.  The 
night  was  mild  and  still,  with  scarcely  a  flicker 
of  wind  to  stir  the  tops  of  the  trees.  There  is 
something  fascinating  about  such  a  transient 
hour  in  a  strange  city.  There  is  a  strong  sense 
of  unreality  in  the  brief  pause  among  things  only 
half  seen,  among  people  whose  lives  are  wholly 
mysterious.  The  lighted  windows  of  the  houses 
mean  nothing  friendly  or  inviting.  The  names 
[93] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

of  the  streets  are  ciphers.  There  is  no  direction, 
no  purpose,  no  familiarity.  You  walk  through 
a  little  world  forever  alien  to  you  and  sniff  an 
atmosphere  "between  two  trains."  All  I  remem- 
ber of  Rockymount  is  a  lighted  church  before 
whose  open  door  we  paused  a  moment  to  watch 
a  minister  thundering  inaudibly  at  a  patient  con- 
gregation. And,  again,  the  shadowy  outlines 
of  a  big  tobacco  warehouse,  where  the  tobacco 
leaves  are  brought  to  be  assorted,  graded  and 
labelled,  and  then  sold  at  auction  to  buyers  from 
all  over  the  world.  With  tobacco  selling  as 
high  as  twenty  cents  a  pound,  I  could  imagine 
some  lively  bidding  under  the  wide-spreading 
roofs  of  those  Rockymount  warehouses!  I  re- 
member, too,  a  broad  shopping  street  inconven- 
iently divided  by  a  network  of  railroad  tracks. 
And  I  remember  that  I  began  to  notice  for  the 
first  time  a  broadcast  politeness  everywhere, 
soft  voices,  gentle  manners  and  a  bland  good 
humour. 

"We  must  be  really  in  the  South,"  I  said  to 
Allan,  "for  all  the  men,  middle  class  and  upper 
class,  say  'yessir'  to  each  other." 

"Yessir,"  agreed  the  lumber  merchant,  "thev 
do!" 

And  while  we  all  laughed,  we  had  to  agree 
that  Southern  manners  are  as  good  as  they  are 
[94] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

famous.  Everywhere  we  met  gentle,  courteous 
people.  No  one  ever  seemed  to  be  in  too  great 
a  hurry  to  answer  our  questions  or  to  set  us  on 
the  right  path  when  our  tourist  feet  had  sadly 
gone  astray,  or  to  give  us  helpful  advice.  If 
the  Mason-Dixon  line  has  not  been  wholly 
erased,  it  is  not  likely  that  North  and  South  will 
ever  again  trip  over  it.  Our  differences  have 
resolved  into  family  spats — in  the  vital  issues 
we  will  stand  together.  England  and  America 
have  been  quarrelling  for  years  over  the  proper, 
decent  and  civilised  way  to  eat  eggs.  England 
took  a  stand  and  said,  "Eggs  shall  be  eaten  in 
the  shell."  America,  hurt  to  the  quick,  took  a 
stand  and  said,  "Eggs  shall  be  eaten  in  a  cup." 
For  years  the  resentment  alternately  smouldered 
and  flared.  And  now  we  have  witnessed  the 
miracle  of  Americans  eating  eggs  in  the  shell 
and  Englishmen  scraping  eggs  out  of  a  cup. 
Allies!  Hand  in  hand,  shoulder  to  shoulder, 
eggs  any  way  you  say,  brother!  So  it  goes.  .  .  . 
Hate  dies  more  easily  than  love  and  it  is  hard 
to  remember  an  old  pain.  Wherever  we  went 
in  the  South  the  moving-picture  theatres  were 
showing  the  most  incendiary  and  poignant  Civil 
War  story  that  has  ever  been  told — "The  Birth 
of  a  Nation."  Posters  of  Grant  and  Lee  clasp- 
ing hands  were  displayed  everywhere;  the  Ku- 
[95] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Klux  Klan  thundered  across  every  signboard; 
all  the  bitterness  and  tragedy  of  the  Reconstruc- 
tion was  enacted  night  after  night  in  the  flicker- 
ing darkness  of  the  Cinemas  to  crowded  houses. 
It  seems  that  we  have  become  dispassionate,  and 
that  hate  and  rancour  have  been  buried  with 
another  generation.  Only  the  Southerner  says, 
very  apologetically,  "Allies!  You  may  eat  fried 
chicken  and  hominy.  But  please  excuse  me, 
brother,  from  pork  and  beans!" 

The  lumber  merchant  escorted  us  to  our  train 
where  we  had  a  joyous  reunion  with  Captain 
Clarke,  who  was  finishing  out  his  run  to  Wil- 
mington on  a  special  train  run  either  for  our 
benefit  or  else  for  the  purely  mathematical  pur- 
pose of  meeting  Captain  Clarke's  professional 
schedule.  For  we  were  the  only  passengers. 
And  at  four  in  the  morning,  just  as  the  first  faint 
blueness  of  dawn  was  pulsing  in  the  east,  we 
staggered  into  Wilmington  and  startled  the 
sleeping  night  clerk  of  the  Orton  Hotel  by 
pounding  on  the  front  door.  It  hardly  seemed 
worth  while  to  go  to  bed,  but  we  went  with 
enthusiasm,  drawing  the  shades  to  shut  out  the 
deepening  light  and  falling  to  sleep  before  our 
soot-grimed  cheeks  touched  the  pillows. 

I  woke  with  a  terrifying  sense  of  unfamiliar- 
ity.  Which  was  the  door  and  which  was  the 
[96] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

window?  Was  it  moonlight  or  sunlight  that 
fell  in  a  dazzling  band  across  my  eyes?  I  sat 
bolt  upright,  and  shrieked  in  a  panic,  "Allan! 
What's  this?" 

"What's  what?"  came  his  reassuring  voice 
from  the  next  room. 

"This  place?" 

"Wilmington."  A  pause,  then  a  long  sigh. 
"Isn't  it?" 

"North  Carolina?" 

"I  reckon  so." 

"Oh,  for  heaven's  sake,  you're  not  going  to 
cultivate  a  Southern  accent,  are  you?"  I  wailed, 
and  fell  flat  on  my  pillows  again. 

Suddenly  there  was  a  terrific  shout.  Allan 
appeared  in  the  doorway,  wrapped  in  bedclothes 
like  the  ghost  in  "Hamlet"  and  brandishing  his 
watch  with  violent  and  hysterical  gestures.  "Do 
you  know  what  time  it  is?"  he  roared. 

"No,"  I  said,  in  a  thin,  small  voice. 

"It's  three  o'clock!" 

"Morning  or  afternoon?" 

"Three  o'clock,"  he  repeated,  biting  off  each 
word  with  the  intensity  of  a  Booth-Barrett  tra- 
gedian, "in  the  afternoon." 

I  tried  to  brush  the  offending  streak  of  sun- 
light out  of  my  eyes.  "Wilmington,  North  Caro- 
lina," I  said  dreamily,  "three  o'clock  in  the  aft- 
[97] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

ernoon.  .  .  .  Telephone  down  to  the  office  and 
ask  them  to  send  breakfast  up — at  once." 

"And  when,"  Allan  asked  in  a  tragic  voice, 
"do  you  expect  to  have  dinner?" 


198] 


CHAPTER  V 

PALMS  AND  SPANISH  MOSS  AT  LAST,  AND  WE 

MAKE  OUR  BOW  TO  ARISTOCRATIC 

MADAME  CHARLESTON 

E  were  undoubtedly  in  the  South  at 
last  for  the  air  was  mild  and  the  sun, 
when  it  shone  at  all,  was  deliciously 
warm.  We  knew  we  were  in  the 
South  because  we  saw  palms  growing  out  of 
doors — not  the  potted  variety  so  popular  at 
weddings,  funerals  and  Tammany  Hall  recep- 
tions, but  tall,  crisp  palms  actually  thriving  in 
the  open  air  in  mid-winter.  It  filled  us  with 
delight  when  we  realised  that  we  had  at  last 
attained  a  climate  where  palms  would  grow  out 
of  doors,  yet  with  characteristic  impatience  we 
were  not  content  to  witness  one  miracle  but  de- 
manded another. 

Was  there  any  Spanish  moss  in  Wilmington? 
We  stopped  at  the  first  drugstore  and  asked  the 
burning  question  of  a  startled  clerk  who  ex- 
pected a  demand  for  bicarbonate  of  soda  or  cold 
cream  and  had  to  pull  himself  together  before 
[99] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

he  could  answer.  Spanish  moss?  Well,  he 
reckoned  so — had  we  tried  Greenfield  Park? 

We  had  not.  The  clerk  followed  us  to  the 
door  and  explained  the  trolley  system  of  Wil- 
mington in  detail,  confusing  us  to  such  an  extent 
that  we  decided  to  walk  to  Greenfield  Park. 
Alas!  for  our  over-zealous  enthusiasm!  The 
road  was  thick  with  white  dust  and  led  us 
through  Wilmington  and  into  its  forlorn  and 
dismal  suburbs.  We  had  heard,  to  quote  a 
proud  citizen  of  Wilmington,  that  "no  buzzard 
had  set  foot  in  the  city  for  over  three  years," 
and  although  we  did  not  know  whether  the  black 
scavengers  had  a  tacit  understanding  with  the 
city  authorities,  it  is  perfectly  true  that  the  only 
buzzards  we  saw  lingered  morosely  in  the  sub- 
urbs. We  admired  the  big  birds  for  their  leis- 
urely manners  and  for  the  upward  tilt  of  their 
wide  wings.  Like  darkies,  they  seemed  to  en- 
joy warm,  sunny  places,  long  hours  of  sleepy 
contemplation  and  'most  anything  to  eat. 

Greenfield  proved  to  be  an  ungarnished  wil- 
derness of  pines  and  live  oaks,  the  summer  para- 
dise of  merry-making  Wilmington.  The  pavil- 
ions and  the  restaurants  were  closed  and  the 
piers  and  bath-houses  that  fringe  the  lake  were 
deserted.  But  there  was  moss — lots  and  lots  of 
it — hanging  in   bedraggled   festoons   from   the 

[100] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

branches  of  a  row  of  decaying  trees  that  rose  out 
of  the  centre  of  the  lake  like  drenched  skeletons. 
We  stood  on  the  shore  and  contemplated  the 
spectacle  as  we  would  have  stared  for  the  first 
time  at  the  pyramids  of  Egypt.  Allan  strove  for 
enthusiasm,  but  his  voice  was  hollow.  He  said 
that  the  ghostly  trees,  the  ashen,  pendant  moss, 
the  dull  blackness  of  the  water,  reminded  him  of 
the  fantastic  illustrations  of  Dulac  and  Kay 
Nielsen.  But  I  knew  that  Spanish  moss  had 
been  a  terrible  disappointment,  for  he  made  no 
move  to  open  his  pochade  box  or  to  settle  down 
on  the  water's  edge  for  an  hour  of  enthusiastic 
work. 

We  were  very  polite  to  each  other  as  we 
skirted  the  lake,  avoiding  any  mention  of  Span- 
ish moss  as  if  we  had  created  an  egregious  social 
error  in  not  liking  it.  It  was  as  if  we  had  come 
face  to  face  with  a  source  of  universal  enthusi- 
asm, like  the  Sphinx,  and  had  felt  no  emotion 
at  all.  We  avoided  the  issue  by  striking  up  a 
conversation  with  a  small  boy  who  had  been 
fishing  in  the  lake  and  was  tying  his  boat  with 
vicious  jerks  to  one  of  the  tumble-down  recrea- 
tion piers. 

"Any  fish  in  the  lake?"  we  asked. 

"Yep.    Bass." 

"Any  luck  to-day?" 

[101] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

The  small  boy  scowled.  "Nope.  Caught  one, 
but  he  slipped  through  a  crack  in  the  boat." 

"Oh!    Is  it  nice  here  in  summer?" 

"Yep.    There's  a  band." 

You  must  admit  that  we  were  rather  pathetic 
about  it.  We  followed  the  small  fisherman  as 
far  as  the  edge  of  the  park,  and  when  he  turned 
aside  there,  we  boarded  a  convenient  trolley  car 
because  we  were  afraid  to  be  left  alone.  It  was 
an  absorbing  trolley  car  and  occupied  our  whole 
attention  because  the  motorman  "doubled  his 
role"  and  took  the  conductor's  part,  dashing 
from  the  front  of  the  car  to  the  rear  and  dis- 
playing such  feverish  energy  that  we  wondered 
whether  he  drew  double  pay,  like  a  protean 
actor,  for  the  feat. 

But  such  speculation  could  not  forever  put  off 
the  question  of  Spanish  moss.  Back  in  Wilming- 
ton again,  the  truth  came  out.  "I  don't  like  it," 
I  whispered  to  Allan.  "Do  I  dare  say  so  in  the 
book?" 

Allan  confessed  that  he  would  as  soon  slander 
his  great  grandmother  as  to  blacken  the  reputa- 
tion of  Spanish  moss.  "It  is  the  mainstay  of  the 
Southern  landscape,"  he  said,  "the  prop,  the 
keystone."  And  he  added  solemnly,  "They 
won't  read  another  page." 

But  you  will,  won't  you,  if  I  declare  myself 

[102] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

here  and  now  a  profound  lover  of  other  South- 
ern specialties — golden  jessamine  and  roses, 
honeysuckle,  fragrant  box  hedges,  nightingales 
and  mocking  birds,  plantation  voices,  good  man- 
ners and  beautiful  architecture?  These  things 
are  not  fallacies  south  of  the  Mason-Dixon  line, 
they  are  adorable  realities.  Only  I  cannot  write 
myself  down,  being  a  sort  of  feminine  George 
Washington  when  it  comes  to  my  likes  and  dis- 
likes, as  an  open-mouthed  worshipper  of  an  ash- 
en, destructive  parasite  which  destroys  beautiful 
trees  and,  if  given  a  good  start,  thinks  so  little 
of  its  environment  that  it  will  grow,  and  flourish, 
on  a  telegraph  wire!  Spanish  moss  takes  its  be- 
ing and  its  sustenance  from  the  air,  like  slander 
and  evil,  and  thrives,  like  slander  and  evil,  on 
the  death  of  something  beautiful.  I  would  tear 
its  thick  webs  down  from  the  gnarled  branches 
of  the  beautiful  oaks  and  give  the  trees  life  again, 
nor  would  I  shed  a  tear  for  the  over-advertised 
parasite,  since  I  have  shed  them  all  for  its  vic- 
tims. 

Wilmington  is  so  far  from  the  sea  that  it  might 
never  have  been  a  port  at  all  if  a  wide  stretch 
of  water  had  not  decided  to  enter  the  land  by 
way  of  Cape  Fear,  bringing  commerce  to  Wil- 
mington to-day  just  as  it  brought  pirates  and 
privateers  a  hundred  years  ago.     The  pirates 

[103] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

have  long  since  been  sent  where  pirates  ought 
to  go,  but  commerce  still  comes  to  Wilmington 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  city's  chief  import 
has  no  way  of  getting  out  of  war-locked  Ger- 
many. Two  of  the  last  German  ships  to  bring 
fertiliser  chemicals  to  Wilmington  are  interned 
in  the  harbour  to-day,  a  striking  proof  that  Bri- 
tannia still  rules  the  waves.  Chile  supplies  the 
deficit  and  Wilmington,  undeterred  by  war, 
sends  ship  after  ship  loaded  with  cotton  down 
through  Cape  Fear  to  the  sea. 

Cape  Fear's  dark  history  attracted  us  and  all 
through  one  merry  morning  we  went  in  pursuit 
of  it,  going  from  bookstore  to  bookstore  only  to 
be  met  with  polite  regrets  and  the  assurance  that 
if  we  could  "get  hold"  of  Mr.  James  Sprunk 
we  could  learn  all  there  is  to  know  about  Cape 
Fear.  Mr.  Sprunk  had  written  a  book  called 
"Cape  Fear  Legends,"  stories  of  buccaneers  and 
ghosts  and  pleasant  adventurers,  and  while  no 
one  in  Wilmington  possessed  a  copy  every  one 
had  heard  of  Mr.  Sprunk's  knowledge  of  the 
North  Carolina  legends.  We  finally  went  to 
Mr.  Sprunk's  office,  lured  by  the  growing  fame 
of  his  book,  and  made  our  embarrassed  plea  to  a 
positive  clerk  who  told  us  that  Mr.  Sprunk  was 
"in  conference"  and  would  we  please  write  down 
our  reasons  for  calling.     He  thrust  a  pad  of 

[104] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

paper  and  a  pencil  through  his  wicker  cage  and 
we  fled,  feeling  that  by  no  possible  stretch  of 
newsgatherer's  impudence  could  we  send  word 
to  Mr.  Sprunk  "in  conference"  that  we  wanted 
to  read  his  "Cape  Fear  Legends."  We  went 
back  to  the  Orton  Hotel,  and  after  a  conference 
of  our  own  decided  upon  the  cowardly  expedient 
of  calling  Mr.  Sprunk  on  the  telephone.  In  a 
thin,  small  voice  I  gave  the  number  to  the  Wil- 
mington exchange  while  Allan  hovered  in  the 
background  with  one  hand  on  the  door-knob 
ready  for  flight. 

"Hello!" 

The  die  was  cast.  "Is  this  Mr.  Sprunk?"  said 
I. 

"No,  this  is  Mr.  Sprunk's  secretary.  Mr. 
Sprunk  is  in  conference " 

"Good  Lord,"  I  whispered  hoarsely  to  Allan, 
"he  is  still " 

"I  beg  your  pardon?    Who  is  this,  please?" 

I  confessed  in  a  panic,  "Miss  Cram,"  and 
halted  miserably.  Allan  opened  the  door  and 
balanced  on  the  threshold. 

"Miss  Cram?" 

"Yes — I,  well,  you  see,  I  want  to  find  out 
something  about  the  Cape  Fear  legends — pirates, 
Indians  and  all  that  sort  of  thing." 

The  voice  at  the  other  end  of  the  'phone  grew 

[105] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

querulous.      "I    can't   hear    a    word    you    say. 
Louder,  please!" 

Louder,  please! 

"Here,"   I  shrieked   at  Allan,  "row   explain 


But  he  was  gone,  calling  over  his  shoulder  as 
he  ran,  "Ring  off,  you  fool!1' 

I  rang  off,  unable  to  bear  the  spluttering  and 
justifiable  rage  that  burned  the  wires  across  Wil- 
mington. I  went  down  stairs,  still  blushing 
hotly  to  the  rim  of  my  hat,  and  found  Allan  in 
cozy  conversation  with  the  hotel  clerk.  "Here's 
a  man  who  can  help  us,"  Allan  shouted,  as  if 
jaunty  nonchalance  could  efface  the  memory  of 
his  cowardice.  "Mr.  Gregson  here  says  to  call 
on  the  Star/' 

"Mr.  Gregson  here"  did  not  intend  to  be  po- 
litely sardonic  for  it  was  not  his  intention  to 
insinuate  that  we  had  hitched  our  wagon  to  a 
comet  Like  every  one  else  in  the  South  he  was 
kind  to  tourists  in  distress,  and  he  meant  the 
morning  newspaper  when  he  advised  our  calling 
on  the  Star.  The  Star  was  at  home  and  received 
us,  in  the  genial  person  of  Mr.  Claussen,  in  the 
editorial  rooms  in  an  atmosphere  endearingly 
familiar  to  me  of  proof-sheets  and  ink,  clippings, 
glue,  encyclopaedias  and  waste-paper  baskets. 
Mr.  Claussen  is  an  enthusiastic  believer  in  the 
ri061 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

new  South,  the  inventor  of  its  commercial  slogan, 
and  one  of  its  most  brilliant  editors.  He  would 
not  tell  us  about  Cape  Fear.  "You  must  see  Mr. 
Sprunk  for  that,"  he  said,  and  our  hearts  dropped 
into  our  boots.  But  he  did  tell  us  about  North 
Carolina  in  the  "Indian  days,"  when  the  Chero- 
kee and  Tacawbe  nations  were  still  to  be  reck- 
oned with  as  enemies  of  the  white  planter.  The 
early  settlers  were  repeatedly  massacred  by  the 
Indians,  the  white  women  were  carried  away  by 
them  and  there  was  more  than  one  instance  of 
"lost  settlements"  when  whole  groups  of  colo- 
nists disappeared  mysteriously  and  were  never 
seen  or  heard  of  again.  South  Carolina  suffered 
the  same  fate,  for  the  Yemasses  were  encouraged 
by  the  Spaniards  of  St.  Augustine  to  attack  the 
English  at  Charleston  and  the  Tuscaroras  were 
implacable  enemies.  Mrs.  Ravenel  in  her  de- 
lightful book,  "Charleston,  the  Place  and  the 
People,"  says  that  "on  the  family  tree  of  the 
Bulls,  opposite  the  name  of  John,  youngest  son 
of  the  emigrant  Stephen,  stands  'first  wife  carried 
off  by  Indians  1715.'  They  lived  at  Bulls  near 
Coosaw  Island,  just  above  St.  Helena,  and  were 
in  the  very  track  of  the  storm.  He,  too,  became 
an  'Indian  fighter.'  Another  woman,  Mrs.  Bur- 
rows, was  taken  by  a  'scalping  party'  and  car- 
ried with  her  child  to  St.  Augustine.  The  child 
[107] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

cried  and  was  instantly  killed,  and  she  was 
ordered,  under  pain  of  death,  not  to  weep  for 
him!  After  being  kept  a  prisoner  for  several 
years,  she  was  allowed  to  return  to  Charles- 
ton, where  she  told  the  governor  that  the 
'Huspah  King'  who  had  captured  her  had  told 
her  that  his  orders  from  Spain  were  to  kill  every 
white  man  and  bring  every  negro  alive  to  St. 
Augustine  and  that  rewards  were  given  for  such 
services." 

So  were  the  Indians  made  the  dupes  of  un- 
scrupulous white  men  and  so  were  the  harassed 
colonists  tried  sorely  in  their  efforts  to  settle  the 
wilderness  of  America.  To-day  the  Cherokees 
and  Tacawbes  of  North  Carolina  are  practically 
extinct;  a  few  of  them  live  on  reservations  in 
the  interior  of  the  State,  a  broken  and  dying 
remnant  of  a  great  people.  It  will  not  be  long 
before  all  memory  of  them  will  be  lost  forever, 
and  like  the  mysterious  Etruscans  of  Italy  only 
their  burial  mounds  and  broken  fragments  of 
beautiful  pottery,  arrow  heads,  primitive  battle 
axes  and  agricultural  implements  will  tell  the 
story  of  their  amazing  and  brief  existence.  Mr. 
Claussen  told  us  that  when  he  was  a  boy  the 
Indians  picked  cotton  on  his  father's  plantation, 
doing  that  menial  work  on  the  site  of  an  ancient 
Indian    battlefield    where    every    turn    of    the 

[108] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

plough  unearthed  some  trophy  of  their  heroic 
past.  The  Indians  despised  the  negroes  and  the 
negroes  were  horribly  afraid  of  the  redmen,  but 
the  simple  and  anything  but  belligerent  slaves 
gradually  outnumbered  the  warriors,  winning  a 
racial  victory  that  may  have  simplified  a  great 
many  things  for  the  white  man.  An  equal  ratio 
of  increase  might  have  presented  some  embar- 
rassing problems. 

To-day  the  negroes  of  Wilmington  rest  secure 
in  their  victory  and  the  proud  and  lonely  Ta- 
cawbe  who  occasionally  comes  to  town  must 
wonder  at  the  obscure  methods  of  destiny.  All 
along  the  waterfront  the  conquerors  sit  in  som- 
nolent groups,  swinging  their  feet  over  the 
water,  their  shoulders  hunched,  their  battered 
hats  over  their  eyes,  watching  a  fish-hook  at- 
tached to  a  piece  of  twine  and  lowered  more  as 
an  excuse  for  sitting  still  than  as  a  lure  for  pass- 
ing fish.  The  sun  beats  down  on  them,  the  sky 
is  blue  over  them  and  the  lazy  days  are  made 
for  much  song,  much  sleep  and  a  little  work. 

Mr.  Claussen  remembered  a  story,  popularly 
believed  in  Wilmington,  of  President  Wilson's 
boyhood,  and  it  is  worth  repeating,  I  think,  to 
prove  my  theory  that  great  men  must  be  aware 
of  their  destiny  while  they  are  still  in  knicker- 
bockers. The  Cherry  Tree  incident  could  only 
[109] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

have  been  arranged  with  one  eye  on  future  gen- 
erations of  hero-worshipping  little  liars.  Lincoln 
and  the  sum  in  arithmetic  on  a  shingle  could 
only  have  been  an  inspired  forethought.  Wil- 
son's story  is  not  generally  known,  but  it  is  a 
classic  and  deserves  to  be  taught  in  our  public 
schools.  The  future  coiner  of  "Too  proud  to 
fight"  set  the  scene  for  his  infant  prodigiousness, 
if  I  may  put  it  that  way,  at  the  old  swimming- 
hole  in  Wilmington.  The  town  bullies,  all  big- 
ger and  stronger  than  the  young  Wilson,  had  set 
upon  a  little  pickaninny.  They  were  pelting 
their  victim  with  sharp  stones  when  the  future 
president  made  his  entrance.  Peace  without 
victory  did  not  enter  the  prodigy's  mind;  he  at- 
tacked all  of  the  bullies  at  once,  vanquished  them 
and  then,  with  his  arm  around  the  rescued  picka- 
ninny, delivered  his  first  ultimatum  to  a  ruth- 
less enemy.  "Never,"  said  he,  in  a  clear  voice 
calculated  to  ring  through  the  ages,  "never  hit 
a  feller  when  he's  down." 

The  story  is  true  because  the  little  pickaninny 
grew  up  the  proud  possessor  of  a  scar  and  a 
long  memory.  When  Wilson  fulfilled  his  essen- 
tial destiny  and  entered  the  White  House,  he  re- 
ceived a  letter  from  the  co-protagonist  of  his 
first  public  appearance.  He  answered  it,  and 
there  is  one  glorified  black  man  in  Wilmington 

[110] 


CHARLESTON   IS   CAUGHT   INTO  A   DREAM  OF   THE 
ROMANTIC    PAST 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

to-day  who  boasts  of  having  in  his  possession  a 
personal  letter  from  the  President  of  the  United 
States. 

We  were  so  charmed  by  the  tale  that  we  for- 
got for  the  moment  our  pursuit  of  Mr.  Sprunk 
and  his  Cape  Fear  legends.  The  Cape  Fear 
River  used  to  be  the  stronghold  of  those  roving, 
free-living  and  free-spending  gentlemen  of  the 
skull  and  crossbones.  They  made  Cape  Fear 
and  its  convenient  shelter  a  hiding  place  whence 
they  swooped  down  on  merchantmen  from  the 
North  and  South,  and  rid  as  many  Spanish  gal- 
leons as  possible  of  their  rich  cargoes.  We  felt 
that  Mr.  Sprunk  had  some  valuable  material 
for  his  book  because  trans-Atlantic  travel  was  as 
ticklish  a  business  in  the  eighteenth  century  as  it 
is  in  the  enlightened  present,  and  Cape  Fear  was 
infested,  not  with  U-boats,  but  with  pirates.  An 
amazing  number  of  ships  were  captured  along 
the  coast,  nor  were  matters  improved  by  king's 
pardons  and  the  glamour  of  romance.  Even 
gentlemen  took  to  piracy  and  called  themselves 
illicit  traders,  which  fooled  no  one.  The  most 
appealing  of  those  fashionable  adventurers  was 
Stede  Bonnet,  who  had  been  a  major  in  the  army 
and  a  man  of  wealth  and  position.  He  aban- 
doned society  for  life  under  the  Jolly  Roger,  not 
an  impossible  transfer  when  one  considers  the 
[in] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

nature  of  the  society.  His  destiny  is  interwoven 
with  that  of  Wilmington,  for  he  was  captured 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Cape  Fear  River  by  Colonel 
Rhett,  who  came  up  from  Charleston  with  two 
sloops  and  bagged  the  fastidious  pirate  in  his 
den. 

Bonnet  escaped  from  Charleston  in  women's 
clothes  and  led  the  English  a  merry  chase  before 
he  was  recaptured  and  finally  hanged  by  the  neck 
and  buried  (we  hope  for  good)  where  the  Bat- 
tery gardens  are  to-day.  Mrs.  Ravenel  says  that 
Bonnet,  who  was  a  sort  of  pirate  Raffles,  plead 
for  his  own  life  with  elegance  and  piety,  and 
that  Chief  Justice  Trott,  who  tried  him  by  an 
old  statute  of  Henry  VIII,  answered  with 
exalted  sarcasm:  "You  being  a  Gentleman  and 
a  Man  of  letters  I  believe  it  will  be  needless 
for  me  to  explain  to  you  the  nature  of  Repent- 
ance and  faith  in  Christ.  Considering  the  course 
of  your  life  and  actions  I  have  reason  to  fear 
that  the  principles  of  Religion  that  have  been 
instilled  into  you  by  your  Education  have  been 
at  least  corrupted  if  not  entirely  defaced  by  the 
scepticism  and  infidelity  of  this  wicked  Age." 

So  there  were  eloquent  criminals,  impression- 
able juries,  bitter  prosecuting  attorneys  and  a 
conviction  of  the  wickedness  of  the  age  even 

[112] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

then!     Is  it  possible  that  the  same  things  will 
exist  two  hundred  years  from  now? 

We  hurried  on  to  Charleston  because  we 
knew  that  we  would  never  "get  hold"  of  Mr. 
Sprunk  and  that  while  there  was  some  slight 
comfort  in  being  shown  around  the  cotton  ware- 
houses and  the  fertiliser  plants,  nothing  but 
"Cape  Fear  Legends"  could  fill  the  gaping  void 
in  our  visit  to  Wilmington.  While  we  were 
paying  our  bill  at  the  Orton  Hotel,  nice  Mr. 
Gregson,  who  was  in  a  civic  panic  (if  there  is 
such  a  thing)  over  our  abrupt  departure,  had  a 
sudden  inspiration  and  declared  that  the  Cap- 
tain of  the  Cape  Fear  steamer  was  just  bound  to 
have  a  copy.  We  brightened.  Where  was  the 
Captain?  He  would  be  back  in  the  morning 
.  .  .  would  we  wait? 

We  shook  our  heads  sadly  and  departed,  un- 
able to  bear  another  disappointment.  And  as  if 
depressed  by  our  failure,  the  country  between 
Wilmington  and  Charleston  was  inconceivably 
desolate  and  forlorn.  I  held  my  little  notebook 
open  and  a  pencil  poised  just  over  the  clean  and 
inviting  page,  hoping  to  find  something  delec- 
table to  write  about.  But  the  untidy  landscape 
spun  out  behind  us  in  an  endless  procession  of 
dried  tobacco  fields,  withered  rows  of  shabby 
cotton,  dirty  villages,  mud,  swamps  and  sand. 

[113] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

But  Charleston  was  true  to  herself  and  saw  to 
it  that  our  welcome  wiped  out  the  memory  of 
the  noteless  trip.  It  was  dark  when  we  arrived 
and  the  little  open  carriage  that  took  us  from 
the  station  to  the  Charleston  Hotel  seemed  to 
us  to  rattle  and  clop  through  a  cobbled  city  of 
dreams.  A  pale  moon,  widely  hooped  and 
courted  by  a  whole  heavenful  of  languid  stars, 
lighted  the  way,  for  Charleston  is  so  much  a 
city  of  the  past  and  of  the  old  world  that  she 
still  permits  you  to  see  the  moon  and  does  not 
attempt  to  dazzle  your  eyes  with  garish  street 
lamps  and  electric  signs.  The  coloured  driver 
clucked  softly  to  his  leisurely  horse,  and  al- 
though it  was  late  and  we  were  tired  and  hun- 
gry we  could  have  jogged  on  indefinitely,  for 
the  air  was  spicy  with  box,  the  aromatic  dust 
of  old  walls  and  the  tempered  saltiness  of  the 
distant  sea,  and  we  caught  glimpses  of  tangled 
gardens  and  wrought  iron  fences,  pillared  houses 
glowing  whitely  in  the  moonlight,  exquisite 
doorways,  churches  and  open  squares  and  cob- 
bled streets,  narrow  alleys  that  turned  abruptly 
aside  and  led  the  pursuing  fancy  into  mysterious 
shadows.  We  sensed  antiquity  all  about  us,  the 
rare  charm  of  historic  ground,  for  Charleston  is 
like  a  beautiful  house  that  has  been  lived  in  for 
countless  generations,  taking  on  a  rare  and  very 
[114] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

personal  quality,  a  patina,  an  inimitable  lustre. 
Charleston's  charm  is  two-thirds  atmospheric 
and  one-third  physical.  It  is  as  bewitchingly 
aristocratic  as  Bath,  a  most  Bourbon  city,  ex- 
clusive, experienced  and  very  simple  as  all  true 
aristocrats  are.  There  is  a  wistfulness  about 
Charleston  that  is  very  appealing;  like  a  delight- 
ful old  chatelaine  who  has  lived  richly,  suf- 
fered much  and  loved  dearly,  Charleston  has 
become  fragile  and  delicate,  infinitely  tender 
and  most  rarely  sweet. 

To  understand  the  peculiar  charm  of  Charles- 
ton as  it  is  to-day  one  must  consider  the  infinite 
variety  of  people  that  went  into  the  making  of 
the  modern  Carolinian.  Virginia  was  settled  by 
adventurous  Cavaliers,  Maryland  was  first  estab- 
lished by  the  Catholics  who  followed  Lord  Bal- 
timore, Pennsylvania  fell  to  the  Quakers  and 
New  England  to  the  Puritans.  But  Charles- 
ton was  laid  upon  a  heterogeneous  racial 
foundation  and  held  together  by  English  gover- 
nors and  administrators.  Dissenters  from  Scot- 
land, England  and  Ireland  mingled  with  Eng- 
lish churchmen,  and  there  were  a  certain  num- 
ber of  Dutch,  Swiss,  Belgians  and  Quakers  be- 
sides the  Huguenots,  who  came,  four  hundred 
and  fifty  strong,  between  1680  and  1688.  The 
aristocracy  which  grew  out  of  this  astounding 

[115] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

assortment  of  peoples  was  an  aristocracy  of 
planters  and  merchants.  Rice  was  the  chief 
product  of  the  Carolinas  until  1865,  and  Mrs. 
Ravenel  says  that  its  planters  were  the  "domi- 
nant class  of  Charleston,  socially  and  politi- 
cally." The  country  gentleman  was  at  his  best 
in  Carolina;  he  was  a  man  of  breeding,  educa- 
tion and  wealth;  he  lived  on  great  plantations 
in  the  centre  of  vast-spreading  rice  fields,  he 
was  a  slave  owner,  his  children  were  educated 
abroad,  and  while  his  life  was  never  lazy  or 
exaggeratedly,  luxurious,  he  lived  well,  with  a 
certain  amount  of  state  and  formality.  As  time 
passed  and  the  first  hardships  of  settling  the  new 
colony  lessened,  life  in  Charleston  patterned  it- 
self more  and  more  after  that  of  England.  A 
city  of  beautiful  houses  took  the  place  of  the  first 
primitive  settlement,  a  very  individual  and  suc- 
cessful architecture  appeared,  gardens  were  laid 
out  and  such  luxuries  as  silver,  pewter,  jewelry, 
fine  furniture,  laces,  satins,  mirrors,  china  and 
rare  wines  were  imported  from  Europe.  There 
were  horse  races,  theatres,  dinners  and  balls  for 
the  amusement  of  the  upper  classes.  The  races 
took  place  at  the  New  Market  course  not  far 
from  the  city,  and  while  the  fashionable  planter 
and  his  family  went  in  great  style,  countrymen 
of  the  "cracker"  type  from  the  District  and  all 
[116] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

of  the  slaves  thronged  to  the  race,  too,  on  foot 
or  in  primitive  carts  and  wagons. 

Dinners,  balls  and  receptions,  under  the  aris- 
tocratic administration  of  the  English  governors, 
were  formal  and  probably  a  very  good  imita- 
tion of  English  functions.  The  planter  did  not 
want  the  mother-country  to  look  down  her  criti- 
cal nose  at  him,  but  of  course  she  did.  The  snug 
little  island  was  as  contemptuous  of  her  prov- 
inces then  as  she  is  to-day — or,  rather,  as  she 
was  until  recently.  The  world  war  brought 
Canada  and  Australia  and  New  Zealand  very 
close  to  snobbish  England's  heart  and  she  may 
no  longer  ignore  them.  But  when  Charleston 
was  an  English  colony  she  suffered  under  the 
criticisms  of  her  Lords  Proprietors.  When 
James  Glenn  came  out  from  England  to  be  gov- 
ernor of  the  province  he  wrote  back  to  the  Lords 
of  Trade  that  he  could  not  help  expressing  his 
surprise  and  concern  to  find  that  there  were 
"annually  imported  into  this  Province  consider- 
able quantities  of  Fine  Flanders  lace,  the  Finest 
Dutch  Linens  and  French  Cambricks,  Chintz, 
Hyson  Tea  and  other  East  India  Goods,  Silks, 
Gold  and  Silver  Laces,  etc."  "The  quantity  is 
too  great,"  he  wrote,  "and  the  quality  too  fine 
and  ill  calculated  for  the  circumstances  of  an 
Infant  Colony." 

["7] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

But  the  planters  and  merchants  of  Charleston 
were  not  rebuked  to  the  extent  of  putting  aside 
their  harmless  little  luxuries.  Dinners  were 
served  by  negro  servants  at  long  tables  spread 
with  fine  linen  and  set  with  rare  china  and  cut 
glass.  Dances  were  given  in  the  large  drawing 
rooms;  the  floors  were  polished  like  mirrors, 
the  crystal  chandeliers  glittered  and  blinked  like 
fairy  cobwebs  and  candles  flickered  in  the 
sconces  on  the  walls.  It  must  have  been  far 
lovelier  than  anything  we  can  do  nowadays  in 
the  way  of  dinners  and  dances,  in  spite  of  elec- 
tric lights  and  tango  orchestras  and  exhaustless 
debutantes,  all  arms  and  tulle,  giving  their  frag- 
ile lives  to  gaiety!  The  most  expensive  modern 
caterers  could  scarcely  equal  the  dishes  con- 
cocted by  the  negro  cooks  of  the  period,  who 
brought  West  Indian  recipes  from  the  Islands 
and  laid  the  foundations  for  the  fame  of  South- 
ern cooking — turtle  and  fresh-water  terrapin, 
rice  and  chicken,  soups  and  fish,  all  sorts  of 
sweets  and  cakes  to  be  eaten  with  Madeira  wine 
and  punch  and  thin  glasses  of  port! 

But  life  was  not  made  up  of  pretty  pleasures. 
The  Carolinian  planter  had  to  manage  his  es- 
tates, discipline  and  guide  his  slaves,  attend  to 
the  manifold  details  of  a  large  establishment — 
the  crops,  the  stables,  the  negro  quarters — and 

[118] 


THE    BEAUTIFUL   SOUTH   PORTAL   OF    ST.    PHILIP  S 
CHURCH 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

be  father,  judge,  confessor  and  farmer  all  in 
one.  He  had,  besides,  to  cope  with  the  Indians, 
with  the  dangers  and  difficulties  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary War,  with  epidemic  sicknesses  and  with 
the  elements.  Charleston  seems  to  be  in  the 
path  of  cyclones  and  hurricanes  and  to  lie  with- 
in the  earthquake  zone,  for  time  and  time  again 
the  city  has  been  blown  to  smithereens  and 
rocked  to  its  foundations  and  burned  to  the 
ground.  There  could  have  been  no  lack  of  ex- 
citement in  the  Carolinian  planter's  life! 

The  last  earthquake,  which  took  place  an  un- 
comfortably short  time  ago,  in  1886,  drove  the 
sixty  thousand  inhabitants  of  the  city  out  of  their 
houses  and  was  only  prevented  from  destroying 
everything  by  some  trick  of  an  obscure  and  un- 
stable Providence.  Walls  were  strained  and 
cracked  to  the  breaking  point  but  still  stood 
upright;  roofs  sagged,  towers  leaned  precari- 
ously, chimneys  toppled  over — but  Charleston 
was  saved.  And  those  of  us  who  care  more  for 
architecture  than  for  anything  which  comes  out 
of  the  brain  and  the  heart  of  man,  ought  to  stand 
at  the  corner  of  Meeting  and  Broad  Streets  and 
cheer  three  times — once  for  the  merciful  earth- 
quake, once  for  Charleston  and  once  for  St. 
Michael's  Church,  miraculously  spared  for  our 
delectation. 

[119] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

When  the  earthquake  "happened"  (one 
wouldn't  say  "quaked,"  would  one?)  Charleston 
was  already  unnerved  by  the  cyclone  of  the  year 
before  which  had  unroofed  houses,  destroyed 
the  water-front  and  flooded  the  whole  city.  The 
earthquake  came  "with  a  terrible  roar,  like  an 
express  train  thundering  through  a  valley,"  and 
for  a  few  minutes  Charleston  reeled  drunkenly. 
The  negroes  thought  that  the  end  of  the  world 
had  come  and  rushed  into  the  churches,  the 
worst  possible  place  for  them,  to  shriek  and  pray. 
The  tower  of  St.  Michael's  sank  twenty  inches, 
the  whole  foundation  of  the  beautiful  structure 
dropping  fearfully  as  the  earth  shifted  beneath 
it.  And  while  its  tilting  is  not  as  evident  as  that 
of  the  Garisenda  and  Asinella  of  Bologna,  it  is 
still  quite  visible  from  the  street.  We  stood  be- 
neath it  and  lifted  our  hats  (this  is  quite  figura- 
tive, of  course)  for  having  preserved  its  balance 
so  long. 

Christopher  Wren  had  his  hand  in  the  build- 
ing of  St.  Michael's.  The  steeple  is  as  surely 
Sir  Christopher's  as  the  tower  of  the  old  church 
at  York  Harbor  in  Maine.  Like  St.  Martin's- 
in-the-Fields,  the  church  has  a  pillared  portico 
and  the  splendid  steeple  shoots  above  it,  dazzling 
white  like  a  tall  lily,  visible  for  miles  and  domi- 
nating Charleston  as  surely  as  Giotto's  tower 

[120] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

dominates  Florence.  During  the  Civil  War  the 
Northerners  fired  at  it  from  Morris  Island, 
throwing  shell  after  shell  at  the  steeple  with 
such  poor  marksmanship  that  no  damage  was 
done  at  all  except  to  the  body  of  the  church. 
I  should  like  to  believe  that  the  guardian  saint 
of  beautiful  architecture,  so  conspicuously  ab- 
sent at  Rheims,  directed  the  fire  of  the  Federals 
on  that  occasion. 

We  went  to  the  vestry  door  and  asked  to  be 
admitted,  making  our  first  pilgrimage  in 
Charleston,  as  one  always  does,  to  St.  Michael's. 
The  vestryman  admitted  us  with  enthusiasm,  but 
let  us  out  again  with  reluctance.  We  learned 
from  him  that  George  Washington  occupied 
one  of  the  well-worn  chairs  in  the  Governor's 
pew,  and  that  the  present  organist  of  St. 
Michael's  is  a  direct  descendant,  six  generations 
removed,  of  the  man  who  installed  the  organ 
in  the  church.  Possessed  of  that  information, 
we  moved  toward  the  vestry  door  again  followed 
by  a  little  knot  of  New  England  tourists  who 
had  caught  the  same  pearls  of  wisdom  as  they 
dropped  from  the  vestryman's  lips.  But  the  ves- 
try door  was  securely  locked  and  it  stayed  locked 
while  the  canny  vestryman  sought  to  dispose  of 
guide  books  and  post  cards.  There  is  nothing 
more  antagonistic  than  being  "held  up"  in  the 

[121] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

name  of  charity.  Fifty  cents  for  a  guide  book 
of  Charleston  was  little  enough,  but  we  set  our 
lips,  closed  our  hands  tightly  on  our  purses  and 
resisted  pressure.  We  all  blushed,  not  out  of 
shame  for  our  own  penuriousness  but  for  the 
persistence  of  the  vestryman.  One  of  the  New 
England  tourists  rattled  the  door,  another  turned 
her  back  and  awaited  release  in  stolid  silence. 
And  to  the  bitter  end,  when  the  infuriated  ves- 
tryman produced  the  key  and  let  us  out  again, 
there  was  not  a  single  clink  of  silver  coins.  I 
am  possibly  prejudiced  but  I  think  the  Italian 
custode's  method  more  artless;  he  blesses  you 
and  your  grandmother,  mentions  the  weather, 
smiles  and  holds  out  his  hand.  .  .   . 

We  paused  at  John  Rutledge's  grave  in  the 
churchyard,  wishing  that  we  could  have  broken 
his  quiet  sleep  long  enough  to  thank  him  for 
having  brought  Charleston  through  the  danger- 
ous period  of  the  break  with  England  and  for 
having  steered  the  cockleshell  Ship  of  State  to 
safety  while  all  of  Charleston  was  divided  be- 
tween Whigs  and  Tories.  The  "shot  heard 
'round  the  world"  was  indeed  heard  at  Charles- 
ton, although  the  Carolinians  might  still  have 
made  peace  with  tax-mad  England  if  England 
had  listened  to  reason.  The  crisis,  like  all  great 
national  crises,  produced  men  who  were  equal 

[122] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

to  the  emergency — Francis  Marion,  Moultrie, 
Jasper,  Haynes,  Laurens,  Rutledge — heroic 
names,  all  of  them!  Rutledge  kept  the  torch 
of  liberty  burning  at  home  while  "Marion's 
men"  harassed  the  British  troops,  lying  in  am- 
bush in  the  swamps  and  forests,  kept  alive  by 
the  gifts  of  the  devoted  Whigs,  subsisting  on 
little  or  nothing  at  all  and,  under  the  inspired 
leadership  of  the  fiery  Huguenot,  sweeping 
down  on  the  unsuspecting  English  for  fierce  and 
generally  victorious  encounters  and  then  disap- 
pearing again  into  the  wilderness. 

If  Pitt  could  have  plead  the  colony's  cause  a 
little  longer,  the  overseas  empire  might  not  have 
been  disintegrated.  Certainly  South  Carolina 
would  have  waited  longer  to  make  the  break. 
But  Pitt  was  dead  and  England  had  so  far  for- 
gotten his  warnings  that  an  English  cannon  ball 
struck  the  statue  of  the  statesman  that  grateful 
Charleson  had  set  up  in  the  centre  of  the  town 
and  carried  away  one  of  the  arms.  To-day,  the 
humiliated  Pitt,  like  a  male  Venus  de  Milo, 
decorates  Washington  Square.  The  baroque 
statue  has  a  nice  air  of  antiquity,  but  Pitt  is 
wrapped  in  draperies  and  looks  as  if  he  had  just 
jumped  out  of  bed,  tangled  in  sheets  and  quilts. 
His  eloauent  gestures  have  dislocated  his  right 

[123] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

arm  and  he  trips  on  his  entangling  bedclothes 
like  a  wild-eyed  somnambulist. 

Charleston  is  open  to  attack  to-day  as  it  was 
during  the  Revolution.  Standing  on  the  Battery 
and  looking  out  between  Fort  Moultrie,  on  Sul- 
livan's Island,  and  Fort  Sumter  to  the  open  sea, 
we  shuddered  to  think  of  the  fate  of  the  city  in 
case  of  a  bombardment  by  enemy  ships.  The 
two  forts  face  each  other  across  a  narrow  strip 
of  water,  and  it  must  have  been  exciting  work 
for  the  Federals  and  Confederates  when  they 
hurled  shot  and  shell  at  each  other  for  forty 
hours.  The  first  battle  of  the  Civil  War  was 
won  by  the  Confederate  garrison  of  Fort  Moul- 
trie, but  the  fiery  Secessionists  did  not  for  long 
have  the  upper  hand.  Charleston  was  bom- 
barded by  the  Northern  army  for  five  hundred 
and  eighty-six  days,  suffering  a  martyrdom  as 
severe  as  that  of  the  cities  of  Northern  France. 
The  people  moved  back  from  the  water-front  or 
lived  in  cellars  or  took  chances  in  the  unpro- 
tected streets,  growing  as  careless  as  the  sorely 
tried  French  under  fire.  It  is  a  miracle  that 
any  of  the  public  buildings  and  residences  of  the 
city  escaped,  but  they  did.  Charleston  rose  out 
of  the  ruin  and  desolation,  out  of  the  humilia- 
tion of  defeat,  the  anguish  of  the  Reconstruction, 
political  corruption,  financial  collapse  and  social 

[124] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

disintegration.  The  city  to-day  is  slightly  wist- 
ful, serene  and  extraordinarily  proud.  Owen 
Wister  painted  a  perfect  picture  of  the  exclusive 
society  of  modern  Charleston  in  "Lady  Balti- 
more." He  opened  the  stately  doors  of  the  old 
houses  along  the  Battery  and  took  us  into  the 
panelled  drawing  rooms  so  fragrant  with  the 
delicate  aroma  of  the  past;  he  permitted  us  to 
see  behind  the  veil  so  jealously  drawn  across 
that  unique  little  world  of  aristocrats. 

Charleston  belongs  to  the  past  and  will  until 
the  last  house  crumbles  to  dust  and  the  last  proud 
Tory  is  laid  to  rest  in  the  churchyard  of  St. 
Philip's  or  St.  Michael's.  Charleston  is  perhaps 
the  only  city  in  America  that  has  slammed  its 
front  door  in  Progress's  face  and  resisted  the 
modern  with  fiery  determination.  There  are  no 
skyscrapers,  no  blighting  factory  chimneys,  no 
glaring  electric  signs.  Even  the  street  cars  pro- 
ceed decorously,  and  one-horse  cabs  are  more 
popular  than  taxis.  Society  stays  behind  closed 
doors  or  ventures  out  in  state  to  ride  or  drive, 
and  there  is  no  preponderance  of  cheap  and 
noisy  po'  white  trash  in  the  streets.  Everything 
is  leisurely  and  sleepy  and  mysteriously  remi- 
niscent. One  hears  the  soft  chatter  of  the  am- 
bling, ragged  blacks,  the  twitter  of  birds,  the 
clop  of  a  lazy  horse.    Charleston  is  caught  into 

[125] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

a  dream  of  the  romantic  past.  She  sits  quietly 
in  her  panelled  drawing  room,  surrounded  by 
beautiful  things,  and  listens  to  dead  voices  with 
a  beating  heart. 

For  Charleston  is  the  personification  of  the 
most  fugitive  and  intangible  thing  in  the  world. 
Charleston  is  a  work  of  art.  Like  San  Gimig- 
nano  and  Siena,  Rothenburg  and  Mont  St. 
Michel,  it  belongs  in  its  entirety  to  a  vanished 
past.  It  is  a  "museum  piece"  among  cities,  and 
there  should  be  a  wicket  gate  at  the  railroad 
station  and  a  guard  to  warn  you  not  "to  touch, 
break  or  otherwise  deface"  the  masterpiece.  We 
hurried  through  the  streets,  whispering  instinc- 
tively. 

In  New  England  one  comes  upon  Colonial 
architecture  sandwiched  in  between  Early  and 
Late  Victorian  jigsaw  atrocities.  A  gabled  roof 
is  often  dwarfed  by  a  showy  Mansard,  a  fine 
brick  chimney  is  spoiled  by  its  field-stone  neigh- 
bour, a  fan  doorway  is  lost  in  a  wilderness  of 
plate  glass  and  walnut  portals.  But  in  Charles- 
ton the  pursuit  of  beauty  is  simplified.  Fine  old 
buildings  are  displayed  side  by  side,  and  one 
has  only  to  advance  crab  fashion  along  the 
streets  with  Mrs.  Ravenel's  book  in  one  hand 
and  a  map  of  the  city  in  the  other,  to  see  the  dis- 
tinctive  architecture  of  South   Carolina   at  its 

[126] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

best  and  (to  be  Irish),  at  its  anything  but  bad 
worst! 

"Beautiful,  beautiful,  beautiful!"  we  sang  at 
every  turning.  And  our  song  was  like  a  fugue, 
or  a  litany,  for  one  "beautiful"  tripped  on  the 
heels  of  the  other  wherever  we  went. 

I  can  always  find  something  to  say  about 
things  I  don't  like,  but  face  to  face  with  perfec- 
tion, I  am  mute.  I  have  stood  in  the  gardens 
of  the  convent  of  the  Blue  Nuns  at  Fiesole  and, 
gazing  down  across  the  olives  and  cypresses  at 
Florence  set  like  a  jewel  in  the  burnished  shield 
of  the  Val  d'  Arno,  I  have  said  "Beautiful"  and 
nothing  more.  Yet  I  have  been  comforted  by 
just  such  speechlessness  in  really  eloquent  souls. 
Kipling  looked  down  from  Fiesole  at  the  same 
miracle  and  while  I  gaped  at  him,  expecting  a 
torrent  of  superlatives — "Beautiful,"  he  said! 
So  I  am  in  good  company,  like  the  cur  that 
trotted  under  the  king's  carriage. 

"Beautiful,"  I  said  before  the  old  Market  at 
Charleston.  It  is  set  upon  a  deep  basement  like 
a  Roman  temple;  a  double  flight  of  steps  leads 
to  the  portico  and  a  simple  cornice  is  thrust 
aloft  by  four  columns.  There  are  many  other 
examples  of  this  domesticated  classicism  in  the 
city — the  Charleston  Hotel,  the  Custom  House, 
Gabriel    Manigault's    City   Hall,    the   Pringle 

[127] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

House  in  King  Street,  the  beautiful  south  portal 
of  St.  Philip's  Church  and  Charleston  College. 
The  severity  of  the  pillared  porticoes  is  relieved 
by  delicate  wrought  iron  railings,  and  the  glar- 
ing whiteness  of  the  columns  has  been  tempered 
by  wind  and  rain  and  sun.  Age,  which  is  so  un- 
becoming to  people,  has  made  Charleston  a  place 
of  rare  beauty.  Heaven  grant  that  the  City 
Fathers  will  never  attempt  to  paint  the  5aded 
walls,  repair  the  peeling  stucco  and  the  rusted 
railings  and  weed  the  gardens!  Only  new  cities 
need  be  kept  in  spick-and-span  condition. 
Charleston,  like  an  old  civilisation,  has  won  the 
right  to  be  careless.  St.  Paul,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  not!  For  cities  are  like  people — only  dukes 
know  how  to  wear  weather-beaten  tweeds,  only 
queens  dare  combine  dowdy  bonnets  and  dia- 
monds, only  kings  are  regal  in  grey  derbies  and 
fawn-coloured  cutaways,  and  only  very  old  cities 
can  afford  to  let  grass  grow  in  their  streets  and 
to  torment  the  soles  (and  the  souls)  of  their 
citizens  with  cobble-stones. 

Mr.  Howells  had  put  a  literary  bee  in  our 
bonnets  and  had  set  us  in  fevered  pursuit  of 
gates.  And  since  Charleston  is  a  city  of  gates 
we  could  not  see  them  all.  The  famous  brick 
gates  of  General  William  Washington's  house 
on  the  Battery  were  easy  to  identify    and  we 

[128] 


;  j 


-  i 


THE  SEVERITY  OF  THE  PILLARED  PORTICO  IS  RELIEVED 
BY   DELICATE    WROUGHT   IRON    RAILINGS 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

paused  many  times  to  peer  through  the  Simon- 
ton  gateway  in  Legare  Street  with  its  wrought 
'iron  lantern  and  the  long  walk  beyond  thickly 
shadowed  by  a  compact  arch  of  trees.  But  the 
amazingly  delicate  and  graceful  gates  of  St. 
•Michael's  and  St.  Philip's  held  us  longest. 

Calhoun  is  buried  in  the  churchyard  of  St. 
Philip's.  Like  Pitt,  he  died  too  soon  for  Amer- 
ica's good.  We  came  upon  his  simple  tomb  in 
the  western  churchyard  after  we  had  vainly 
searched  for  it  nearer  St.  Philip's.  I  have 
avoided  graveyards  scrupulously  since  Edgar 
Lee  Masters  discovered  that  every  epitaph  con- 
ceals a  tragedy.  I  used  to  believe  all  the  glow- 
ing tributes  and  heartbreaking  laments,  and 
thought  that  every  crumbling,  moss-grown  slab 
concealed  an  angel  until  Mr.  Masters  happened 
along  and  unearthed  the  corruption  beneath  my 
feet.  If  Gray  had  read  the  "Spoon  River  An- 
thology," could  he  have  written  the  "Elegy"? 
I  wonder  I 

I  had  no  sooner  set  foot  in  St.  Philip's  church- 
yard than  I  stumbled  on  a  tragedy,  a  grim  little 
tragedy!    I  give  it  to  you  for  elaboration: 

"Died  the  22nd  of  August  1799 
Joseph  Jones  of  Milford 
State  of  Massachusetts 

[1291 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

In  the  62nd  year  of  his  Age 
After  three  Days  of  an 
Epidemic  Sickness." 

Alas,  that  poets  should  open  our  eyes  to  such 
realism!  We  hurried  out  of  the  picturesque 
churchyard  and  forgot  Joseph  Jones'  three  days 
of  epidemic  sickness  in  peeping  through 
wrought  iron  gates  and  over  high  walls  at  the 
lovelier  epitaphs  of  two  charming  Charleston- 
ians,  Dr.  Garden  and  Mr.  Poinsett,  who  named 
the  gardenia  and  the  gorgeous  poinsettia  and 
immortalised  themselves  in  the  petals  of  flowers. 
Charleston  hides  its  gardens  behind  high  walls 
and  in  courtyards,  but  every  balcony  is  hung 
with  vines,  the  polished  leaves  of  the  magnolias 
and  palms  thrust  above  the  highest  walls,  and  in 
the  spring  the  whole  city  is  fragrant  with  the 
perfume  of  mimosa  and  jessamine,  violets  and 
roses.  The  gardens  were  closed  to  us;  we  could 
only  press  our  faces  against  the  gates  and  stare 
wistfully  in  at  their  tangled  loveliness,  but  the 
Battery  was  open  to  every  one  with  no  annoying 
"Keep  off  the  grass"  signs  and  lots  of  comfort- 
able benches  in  cool,  shadowy  places.  I  will 
leave  you  there,  pacing  up  and  down  under  the 
wide-spreading  live  oaks  with  the  wind  from  the 
sea  blowing  freshly  against  you  and  Mrs.  Rav- 
enel's  book,  newly  cut,  under  your  arm.    For  I 

[ISO] 


OF 'THE  SOUTH 

have  told  you  all  I  know  (but  not  all  I  feel) 
about  Charleston.  Perhaps,  when  you  have  fin- 
ished the  book,  you  will  have  dinner  with  us — 
we  have  ordered  Edisto  Island  oysters,  Mallard 
duck  from  Georgetown,  a  salad,  a  Southern 
sweet  and  coffee.  .  .  ., 


[131] 


CHAPTER  VI 

A  CONFESSION  OF  LAZINESS  IN  SAVANNAH  AND  A 
STEP  FURTHER  SOUTH  TO  "TAX" 

BELIEVE  Allan  was  tired  of  being 
addressed  as  "Cap"  by  bellboys  and 
Pullman  porters.  Because  he  bears 
his  thirty  years  seriously  he  aspired 
to  "Colonel,"  remembering  the  story  our  father 
tells  of  the  rural  newspaper  correspondent  who 
misinterpreted  his  hieroglyphic  signature  and 
announced  that  "Colonel  W.  D.  Warn"  was  "in 
our  midst."  Allan  had  always  longed  to  be 
called  "Colonel"  on  his  own  account,  so  before 
we  left  Charleston  he  went  in  search  of  a  hatter 
and  bought  a  broad-brimmed  felt  hat.  The 
clerk  who  sold  the  disguise  confided  to  us  that 
he  was  "bored  to  death  with  Charleston,"  but 
that  he  was  "just  in  love  with  Savannah."  When 
pressed  for  reasons,  he  explained  that  Savannah 
was  a  "right  lively  town  with  lots  of  parks  and 
all  lit  up  at  night." 

"I  certainly  do  envy  you-all  going  there,"  he 
said  pathetically. 

[132] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Allan,  already  wearing  his  Cy-arter  of  Cy- 
artersville  hat  and  influenced  by  the  subtle  asso- 
ciation, craved  the  gaiety  of  this  "lit  up"  Savan- 
nah. We  took  leave  of  the  hat  clerk  and  hurried 
back  to  the  hotel  agency  to  buy  our  tickets. 

"You  can  sit  in  the  parks,"  Allan  remarked 
suddenly,  becoming  audible  after  a  long  and 
pleasant  contemplation. 

And  I  chortled  angrily:  "The  hat  clerk  did 
not  mean  what  you  think  he  meant.  He  meant 
street  lights,  not  mint-julep  illumination.  Parks 
indeed!" 

The  ticket  agent  thought  that  we  could  catch 
the  train  to  Savannah  without  any  trouble.  He 
wasn't  quite  sure  when  it  would  get  into 
Charleston,  for  it  was  three  and  a  half  hours 
late. 

"Late?" 

The  ticket  agent  seemed  slightly  embarrassed. 
"Yes'm.  You  see,"  he  explained,  casting  madly 
about  for  reasons,  it's  a  through  train  from  the 
North,  and  they're  having  mighty  cold  weather 
in  New  York.    Paper  says  it's  down  below  zero." 

"I  suppose  you  mean  that  Southern  trains  suf- 
fer from  the  cold." 

"Yes'm."  The  clerk  giggled  and  rubbed  his 
hands.  "That's  it.  You'll  want  two  tickets  to 
Savannah,  then?" 

[133] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

"If  you  are  sure  that  the  train  is  going  to 
pass  through  Charleston  at  all  to-day." 

The  clerk  became  discreetly  hysterical.  He 
considered  us  great  wags.  He  stamped  the  two 
tickets  and  shuffled  them  as  if  he  were  playing  a 
hand  at  poker. 

"Can't  you  give  us  Pullman  reservations?" 
Allan  always  asked  this  question,  although  he 
knew  the  answer  by  heart. 

"No,  sir."  The  agent  was  positive.  "You  can 
get  them  on  the  train." 

But  when  the  train  finally  ambled  into 
Charleston,  four  hours  late,  every  seat  in  the 
Pullman  cars  was  occupied.  A  personally  con- 
ducted "tower"  of  very  old  New  England  ladies 
was  on  its  way  to  Florida,  and  had  settled  itself, 
apparently  for  life,  in  every  available  chair. 
So  Allan  was  banished  in  lonely  glory  to  the 
smoker,  while  a  place  was  made  for  me  beside 
an  old  lady  who  surrendered  to  my  being  there 
rather  through  weakness  than  because  of  any 
charitable  instinct.  The  "tower"  was  very,  very 
tired  and  crumpled  and  bored.  Their  Personal 
Conductor  had  disappeared,  probably  to  the  rear 
platform  to  think  of  a  new  answer  to  the  un- 
answerable question,  "Why  are  Southern  trains 
always  late?"  I  daresay  the  inspired  Charleston 
ticket  agent's  excuse  had  never  occurred  to  him, 

[134] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

although  zero  weather  in  New  York  was  as  good 

a  reason  as  any  other 

I  sat  rigidly  at  the  New  England  spinster's 
side,  trying  to  make  myself  as  small  as  possible 
and  staring  out  of  the  window  at  an  endless 
panorama  of  swamps,  at  forests  of  ghostly  trees 
dead  in  the  suffocating  embrace  of  hairy  moss, 
at  forlorn  and  untidy  villages,  at  rice  fields  and 
tumble-down  negro  cabins,  at  whitewashed 
farm-houses  set  within  corrals,  at  swamps  and 
more  swamps,  until  the  spinning  landscape  be- 
came merely  a  repetition  of  itself.  Whenever 
the  train  stopped,  as  it  did  very  often  (probably 
because  of  the  cold  up  North),  I  went  out  to 
stand  on  the  platform  and  to  get  a  whiff  of  fresh 
air,  for  the  old  ladies  apparently  "towered"  her- 
metically sealed  against  atmospheric  contamina- 
tion. There  always  rose  to  me  an  ardent  odour 
of  pigs,  pine  trees,  moss  and  evergreens,  the 
characteristic  flavour  of  the  rural  South.  Little 
knots  of  people  watched  the  arrival  of  the  train 
at  all  of  these  small  stations,  and  one  or  two 
country  wagons,  covered  with  mud  and  drawn 
by  lazy,  dozing  horses,  waited  for  possible  pas- 
sengers or  for  a  purely  hypothetical  freight.  As 
the  sun  went  down  we  entered  timber  lands, 
splendid  forests  of  pine  and  cypress,  blackly  out- 

[135] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

lined  against  the  magnificent  conflagration  in  the 
west. 

Through  it  all  the  old  ladies  yawned  and 
stifled  little  moans  of  weariness.  One  of  them, 
outrageously  fat,  lay  full  length  on  one  of  the 
chairs,  her  ridiculously  small  feet  held  aloft  on 
a  pillow,  her  fat  hand  waving  a  palm  leaf  fan. 
She  had  been  to  Florida  before  on  a  half-for- 
gotten and  wholly  glorified  honeymoon  with 
"dear  Mr.  Hemingway,  my  first  husband."  She 
spoke  with  awe-inspiring  familiarity  of  the 
"Pawnee  de  Leeon"  at  St.  Augustine.  She  had 
never  travelled  in  a  personally  conducted  party 
before — they  were  vulgar  and  crowded  and  hur- 
ried. .  .  .  Her  voice,  as  acute  as  a  buzz-saw, 
rasped  the  old  ladies  beyond  endurance.  One 
by  one,  as  dusk  fell,  they  put  their  little  "trav- 
elling pillows"  behind  their  aching  heads  and 
pretended  to  go  to  sleep. 

It  seemed  to  us  that  the  forests  and  tangled 
swamps  gave  way  to  civilisation  and  to  paving 
stones  at  the  very  gates  of  the  city,  for  Savannah 
was  not  heralded  by  any  suburbs;  the  train 
passed  out  of  the  darkness  of  the  open  country 
into  the  station  with  no  more  warning  than  a 
few  scattered  houses  and  a  straggling  proces- 
sion of  rural  street  lamps. 

Three  soot-grimed  travelling  salesmen  got  into 

[136] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

the  Savannah  Hotel  'bus  with  us.  They  had  ap- 
parently been  travelling  and  selling  in  small 
country  towns,  and  the  longing  for  sidewalks 
and  asphalt,  street  cars,  shops,  bright  lights  and 
noise  obsessed  them,  for  they  were  New  York- 
ers to  the  last  "woid"  in  their  vocabularies.  As 
the  'bus  rattled  through  Savannah  they  burst  into 
hymns  of  joy.  A  live  town!  Look  at  the  lights 
— clusters  of  'em — and  electric  signs  and  sky- 
scrapers! It  was  not  native  soil,  but  to  them  it 
was  flavoured  with  the  essence  of  civilisation;  it 
reflected  New  York  and  sent  shivers  of  happi- 
ness through  them.  B  rough  ton  Street  was  not 
Broadway — there  is  only  one  Broadway — but  it 
was  at  least  crowded  with  people,  ablaze  with 
light,  draped  in  the  shreds  of  their  true  god- 
dess's raiment.  The  sooty  travelling  salesmen 
were  like  pilgrims  come  upon  a  glimpse  of 
Mecca.  As  we  drew  up  at  the  door  of  the  hotel 
and  a  crowd  of  bellboys  and  porters  pounced 
on  the  luggage  like  buzzards,  the  three  sales- 
men sighed  profoundly. 

"A  live  town,"  they  said,  "at  last!" 
Others  of  their  genial  class  filled  the  gilt  and 
marble  lobby  to  suffocation  and  rejoiced  openly 
in  their  native  atmosphere  of  smoke,  palms, 
page-boys,  brass  spittoons  and  leather  lounge 
chairs. 

[137] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

The  hotel  graciously  admitted  having  received 
our  telegram  and  summoned  a  bellboy  to  show 
us  the  way  to  our  rooms.  We  bewailed  the  cor- 
dial host  of  the  past  who  offered  the  traveller 
not  only  shelter  but  hospitality.  The  clerk  of  a 
modern  skyscraper  hotel  has  no  time  for  niceties; 
he  cannot  build  a  fire  on  the  hearth  for  you  or 
attend  himself  to  your  dinner  or  gossip  pleas- 
antly. He  spins  a  huge  key  across  the  top  of 
his  desk,  glances  at  your  signature  and  raises 
two  fingers,  with  the  Pope's  gesture,  to  summon 
a  bellboy  who  will  do  the  honours.  We  have 
often  encountered  darkies  who,  entrusted  with 
this  duty,  felt  the  solemnity  of  the  occasion. 
Many  a  coloured  bellboy  has  swung  wide  our 
doors,  and  while  waiting  in  delightful  embar- 
rassment for  his  tip  has  wished  us  a  "sho'  enuff 
good  time."  Most  darkies  like  formality  and 
little  courtesies;  they  respond  to  luxurious  sur- 
roundings, to  eloquence  and  to  good  breeding. 
They  are  children  and  actors,  and  their  sim- 
plicity may  be  their  ultimate  salvation. 

But  the  bellboy  who  escorted  us  to  our  rooms 
in  the  Hotel  Savannah  was  not  a  playboy  of  the 
Southern  world,  for  he  did  not  seem  to  think 
that  the  responsibility  of  our  welcome  rested 
on  his  shoulders.  He  put  our  suitcases  down, 
deposited  his  tip  and  departed  whistling  "Un- 

[138] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

derneath  the  Stars."  The  Savannah  had  another 
way  of  meeting  its  duties  as  host,  for  the  rooms 
were  plastered  with  warnings,  advice,  sugges- 
tions and  threats,  all  neatly  printed  on  cardboard 
placards  and  affixed  to  the  wall  where  they 
would  be  most  likely  to  catch  the  guest's  eye. 
I  read  some  of  the  paternal  notices  aloud,  while 
Allan  unstrapped  the  suitcases. 

"  'To  our  friends,'  "  the  first  one  ran,  disarm- 
ing resentment  very  coyly.  "  'If  you  leave  your 
windows  open,  please  turn  off  radiator.  We 
should  not  be  expected  to  heat  the  outside  of  our 
building.'  " 

"Good  advice,"  Allan  thought. 

"Yes,"  I  agreed,  "but  offensive,  just  the  same. 
Here's  another.  Listen  to  this  one!  'Office 
buildings  are  opposite  this  room.  If  you  desire 
privacy,  lower  your  shades.'  " 

Allan  shouted  with  laughter.  "Of  all  the  in- 
fernal impudence!  Go  on — what  else  do  they 
expect  of  us?" 

"Oh,  the  next  one  is  harmless  enough.  "If 
you  do  not  wish  to  be  disturbed,  please  place 
this  card  on  outside  of  door  and  remove  when 
leaving  room.'  " 

"Thanks!    What  else?" 

"  'We  do  not  have  a  half-day  rate;  when  room 

[139] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

is  assigned  to  any  one  we  will  collect  for  full 
day.' " 

"It  sounds  like  a  model  prison.    Go  on." 

"  'Turkish  baths  in  basement,'  "  I  read,  "and 
here  is  another,  attached  to  the  telephone,  which 
says,  'Please  use  the  pad  and  spare  the  walls.'  " 

We  tried  to  meet  all  the  requirements,  and 
although  it  was  very  late  went  down  to  dinner, 
fearful  of  meeting  with  more  printed  warnings 
on  the  way.  The  dining  room  was  not  crowded, 
but  it  was  "lit  up"  just  as  the  hat-clerk  in 
Charleston  had  said  all  of  Savannah  would  be, 
and  as  an  added  attraction  a  whole  series  of 
bells,  attached  to  the  wainscoting  and  operated 
by  electricity,  played  popular  tunes  to  drown 
out  the  crash  of  crockery  and  the  weaker  efforts 
of  the  hotel  orchestra.  We  reverted  to  type  and 
abandoned  chicken  for  steak,  the  best  steak  I 
have  ever  tasted,  North  or  South.  And  the 
chronicle  of  the  evening  might  lhave  been  a 
gourmet's  pleasure  if  a  page-boy  had  not  come 
into  the  dining  room  shouting  aloud  for  "Major 
General  Leonard  Wood." 

Every  one  started  and  turned  to  stare  at  the 
erect,  handsome  man  who  called  the  page-boy  to 
his  table,  and  our  waiter,  creeping  very  close  to 
whisper,  told  us  that  it  was  the  General  Wood 
who  had  been  dining  so  inconspicuously  just 

[140] 


GREAT    SHIPS    COME    EIGHTEEN    MILES    FROM    THE    SEA 
TO  savannah's   FRONT  DOOR-STEP 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

across  the  room.  We  had  seen  Raymond  Hitch- 
cock at  the  Monticello  in  Norfolk,  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt had  appeared  for  a  moment  on  the  plat- 
form of  her  private  car,  the  "Mayflower,"  when 
we  were  waiting  in  the  Charleston  station  for 
our  train,  and  here  was  America's  greatest  gen- 
eral not  ten  feet  away!  We  tried  not  to  stare, 
but  I  found  several  excuses  to  turn  my  head  in 
his  direction. 

After    dinner    we    went    out    into    crowded 
Broughton  Street  to  look  for  a  book  store,  and 
possibly  to  find  a  guide  that  would  set  our  tour- 
ist feet  on  the  right  paths.     We  discovered  a 
bookseller,  but  he  had  no  guide  book  to  offer 
us,  shrugging  his  shoulders  at  our  preposterous 
assumption  that  the  history  of  Savannah  could 
be  reduced  to  a  few  paragraphs  and  sold  to  lazy 
trippers  for  a  quarter.    He  led  me  into  the  back 
of  his  shop  and  pointed  to  a  revolving  bookcase 
full  of  heavy,  thick,   dust-powdered  volumes, 
and  as  he  wheeled  the  bulging  shelves  for  my  in- 
spection he  ran  his  finger  over  the  titles.    There 
were  histories  of  Georgia  in  three  ponderous 
volumes,  histories  of  Savannah's  settlement,  its 
Revolutionary  struggles,   its  great  men;   there 
were  stories  of  John  Wesley,  who  preached  for 
the  first  time  in  America  on  the  spot  where  the 
Savannah  Custom  House  now  stands;  there  were 

[141] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

bulky  Civil  War  histories,  memoirs  and  biog- 
raphies, harbour  reports,  trade  statistics.  At 
each  revolution  of  the  bookcase  I  beheld  new 
histories — illustrated  histories  bound  frivolously 
to  attract  the  sluggish  traveller's  eye;  fat,  busi- 
nesslike histories  bursting  with  dates  and  infor- 
mation. "Life  of  Oglethorpe,"  "Life  of  Wes- 
ley," "Life  of  Aaron  Burr,"  "Life  of  Jefferson 
Davis,"  "Life  of  Lafayette,"  "The  Civil  War," 
"The  Reconstruction."  .  .  0 

"All  Georgiana,"  said  the  bookseller,  giving 
the  bookcase  another  twist  and  blowing  away 
the  dust  that  had  settled  on  the  gilt-edged  pages 
of  a  history  of  the  American  Revolution. 

All  Georgiana! 

I  turned  in  a  panic  to  Allan.  "I  am  going 
back  to  New  York,"  I  threatened.  "I  cannot 
write  the  history  of  Savannah  in  a  chapter  lim- 
ited, by  contract,  to  five  thousand  words.  It  isn't 
fair,"  I  wailed,  becoming  tearful,  "to  expect  it 
of  me." 

We  stared  at  the  groaning  bookcase  in  morose 
silence,  while  the  bookseller,  suddenly  sympa- 
thetic, looked  over  the  top  of  his  spectacles  and 
asked,  "Are  you  goin'  to  write  a  book?"  in  the 
tone  of  voice  which  implies  "Are  you  thinking 
of  jumping  over  the  moon,  by  any  chance?" 

[142] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

"No,"  I  retorted,  turning  on  my  heel,  "I've 
given  up  all  thought  of  it." 

Outside  in  Broughton  Street  again  I  gave  way 
to  a  violent  attack  of  nerves.  "You  will  have  to 
take  me  to  the  movies,"  I  said  pitifully,  "where 
I  can  forget  Georgiana.  I  think  Savannah  must 
be  the  most  historically  complicated  city  in  the 
world." 

"You  can  skip  it  in  the  book,"  Allan  said.  He 
really  believed  I  could,  for  he  only  sketches 
what  interests  him  and  I  have  to  manoeuvre,  un- 
til the  machinery  of  my  literary  style  creaks,  to 
write  paragraphs  that  can  be  used  as  captions 
for  his  drawings.  "You  ought  to  be  able  to  do 
something  about  it,"  he  said,  as  we  hurried  up 
Broughton  Street  in  search  of  a  cinema.  "Touch 
lightly  on  Savannah  and  bear  down  heavily  on 
St.  Augustine." 

Vaguely  comforted  but  not  convinced,  I  fol- 
lowed him  into  an  Arabian  Nights'  theatre,  an 
Orientalised  nightmare  place  made  of  card- 
board, coloured  electric  lights,  gilt  and  pink 
paint.  A  very  sallow  young  man  stood  in  the 
lobby  and  sprayed  cheap  perfume  over  us  as  we 
passed  into  the  pitch  darkness  of  the  theatre, 
whether  as  a  prevention  or  as  a  compliment  we 
could  not  discover.  Reeking,  we  stumbled  into 
our  seats  and  glanced  up  at  the  screen  just  in 

[143] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

time  to  see  Theda  Bara  strangled.  Behind  us, 
row  after  row  of  people,  reeking,  too,  surged  up- 
ward in  a  huge  amphitheatre,  so  that  the  last 
row  of  white  faces,  glowing  like  a  string  of 
phosphorescent  moons  in  the  strange  gloom, 
hung  just  below  the  gilded  ceiling.  The  organ 
wheezed  and  groaned  and  there  was  a  constant 
procession  of  people  going  in  and  out,  as  un- 
affected by  the  Bara's  death  agonies  as  if  the 
shadow  on  the  screen  were  only  the  ghost  of 
a  bad  dream,  forgotten  instantly  and  wholly  un- 
important. I  wonder  whether  the  motion  pic- 
ture, in  giving  the  public  horrors  as  a  sort  of 
after-dinner  relish,  has  not  dulled  our  sensibili- 
ties so  that  we  could  watch  a  murder  or  a  hang- 
ing or  the  "shooting  up"  of  an  entire  town  with 
no  other  interest  except  a  purely  soulless  one  in 
the  photographic  possibilities  of  the  crime?  We 
were  driven  to  the  movies  for  entertainment, 
not  only  because  they  served  to  drive  great  anxie- 
ties (such  as  the  history  of  Savannah)  out  of 
my  mind,  but  because  there  were  very  few 
flesh  and  blood  players  in  the  South.  The  divine 
Sarah  followed  us  all  the  way  down  the  Atlantic 
Coast,  giving  two  one-act  plays  while  her  little 
company  bore  the  heavier  burden  of  acting  in 
French  before  audiences  that  waited  only  to 
glimpse  the  most  famous  and  the  most  heroic 

[144] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

actress  of  her  time.  Cyril  Maude,  playing  in 
"Grumpy,"  which  I  had  seen  on  both  sides  of 
the  ocean,  appeared  wherever  the  magnificent 
and  weary  Sarah  had  decided  not  to  stop.  I 
was  profoundly  sorry  for  both  of  them,  for  I 
could  imagine  the  combined  mental  and  phys- 
ical strain  of  travelling  all  day,  playing  an  ex- 
acting role  at  night  and,  in  Bernhardt's  case, 
sleeping,  or  trying  to  sleep,  in  a  private  car, 
lulled  by  the  hissing  of  engines,  the  clamour  of 
bells,  the  shouts  of  trainmen  and  the  fiendish 
clatter  of  baggage  trucks.  While  we  could  be 
pitiful  of  the  two  distinguished  strollers,  we 
could  not  watch  them  play  every  night,  and  our 
schedule  seemed  to  tally  exactly.  And  because 
the  theatre,  in  any  form  at  all,  is  essential  to  our 
winter  evenings,  we  haunted  the  flickering  dark- 
ness of  the  cinema  caverns,  often  finding  igno- 
rance and  vulgarity,  sometimes  happening  upon 
the  rare  seed  of  art. 

"Besides,"  Allan  whispered,  as  soon  as  Theda 
Bara  had  been  decently  buried,  and  that  divine 
mountebank  Charlie  had  shuffled  out  of  the 
shadows  and  had  stirred  laughter  in  the  tiers 
of  people  that  was  like  the  rustle  and  roar  of  a 
rising  wind,  "and  besides,  no  one  likes  history. 
I  shouldn't  think  of  going  in  for  dates  and  all 
that  sort  of  thing.    People  hate  to  be  told  any- 

[145] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

thing.  Just  arrange  some  sort  of  an  explanation 
of  my  illustrations  and  skip  lightly  over  Savan- 
nah." 

I  nudged  him  fiercely.  "Look  at  Charlie,"  I 
said  between  my  teeth.    "Don't  tempt  me." 

But  we  skipped  lightly  over  Savannah  the 
next  day  in  an  automobile,  driving  very  fast 
when  we  came  to  historic  ground  and  "just  creep- 
ing" when  there  was  nothing  to  learn.  The  orig- 
inal city  laid  out  by  General  James  Oglethorpe 
in  1733  is  still  the  heart  of  Savannah,  so  that  the 
view  from  our  windows  covered  all  of  the  col- 
onists' fortified  settlement  and  the  towers  and 
spires  of  the  modern  city.  We  could  see  the  river, 
shining  like  a  broad  band  of  platinum  where  it 
skirted  the  city,  a  river  deep  enough  to  allow 
great  ships  to  come  the  eighteen  miles  from  the 
sea  to  Savannah's  front  doorstep.  The  morning 
paper  informed  us  that  eight  million  dollars' 
worth  of  exports  had  made  the  "below  average" 
record  for  the  month  of  December,  so  that  we 
looked  down  upon  die  beautiful  city  from  our 
lofty  windows  with  modern  admiration  for  her 
thrift,  her  success.  Like  a  man  who  has  "come 
back"  from  ruin  and  disaster,  Savannah  has  sur- 
vived the  terror  and  the  destruction  of  two  great 
wars.  During  the  Revolution,  first  the  English 
and  then  the  American  troops  held  a  line  of  en- 

[146] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

trenchments  that  girdled  the  city  like  a  strang- 
ling noose.  During  the  Civil  War,  the  Confed- 
erate trenches  faced  the  Union  trenches  within 
what  are  to-day  the  city  limits.  Out  of  the  bit- 
terness of  defeat  and  the  terrible  period  of  recon- 
struction the  modern  Savannah  has  emerged,  one 
of  the  best  reasons  for  the  commercial  slogan, 
'Keep  your  eye  on  the  South." 

The  indescribably  hoarse  bell  of  Christ 
Church  woke  us  to  a  wide  panorama  of  this  mir- 
acle, and  as  soon  as  possible  after  breakfast  we 
set  out  to  explore  by  motor  what  had  looked  so 
enticing  from  the  fifth  floor  of  the  Hotel  Savan- 
nah. The  chauffeur  was  a  chocolate-coloured 
boy  who  was  so  in  love  with  his  own  hue  that  he 
had  duplicated  it  in  his  clothes,  achieving  a 
camouflage  which  must  have  made  him  invisi-ble 
on  the  shady  side  of  the  street.  He  was  averse 
to  being  polite,  as  if  good  manners  were  in  some 
mysterious  way  a  surrender  to  the  superiority  of 
the  white  race.  We  told  him  to  skip  lightly  over 
Savannah  and  left  him  to  his  own  devices.  And 
while  I  cannot  believe  that  he  was  being  inten- 
tionally subtle  when  he  turned  out  of  the  city 
and  took  us  to  the  old  Hermitage  plantation,  it 
is  true  that  he  let  us  see  all  that  is  left  of  the 
tragic  past  of  his  people. 
Tragic— yes,  and  incomparably  romantic.  The 
[147] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

approach  to  the  Hermitage  plantation  is  su- 
premely beautiful;  melancholy  because  it  be- 
longs to  an  age  that  is  irrevocably  lost,  exquisite 
with  the  shadowy  imprint  of  the  legendary 
South,  the  South  of  magnificent  distinction, 
beauty,  pride,  the  art  of  living  and  the  essence  of 
good  breeding.  The  Hermitage  seemed  to  us  the 
realisation  of  a  literary  dream,  the  picture  of  that 
vanished  past  which  has  come  to  be  so  real  to  us 
through  the  novels  of  Gilmore  Simms,  Cable, 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  Mrs.  Southworth,  and 
the  splendid  stories  of  Miss  Johnson,  Winston 
Churchill,  James  Lane  Allen,  Joel  Chandler 
Harris  and  Thomas  Nelson  Page — great  spin- 
ners of  adorable  yarns,  painstaking  explorers  in- 
to the  rich  fable-lore  of  the  South,  who  have  re- 
created the  most  romantic  page  in  American  his- 
tory. The  Hermitage  plantation  at  Savannah 
satisfied  our  longings,  stirred  up  memories  of  all 
the  dreams  we  had  ever  dreamed  of  the  South, 
filled  us  with  satisfaction,  as  if  the  chimera  we 
had  been  pursuing  all  the  way  from  New  York 
were  captured  at  last,  like  a  rare  and  elusive  but- 
terfly. It  was  all  that  a  plantation  should  be.  We 
spun  toward  the  Big  House  along  a  magnificent 
avenue  of  live  oaks  that  sprang  from  gnarled  and 
twisted  roots  and  arched  overhead  with  the 
beautiful  intricacy  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci's  fres- 

[148] 


^"*  \v.vi-}r X'  'tf/tS?     y^^T1^} 


•  \       u 


A   MAGNIFICENT   AVENUE   OF    LIVE   OAKS 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

coed  branches  on  the  ceiling  of  the  Sforza  palace 
at  Milan.  The  leaves  lay  one  over  the  other,  in 
an  exact  and  bewildering  pattern,  shutting  out 
the  pale  sunlight  so  that  we  ran  through  a  tun- 
nel of  green  shadows — a  place  for  fairies  and 
pretty  ghosts.  The  road  was  sandy  and  weed- 
grown,  but  one  had  only  to  half  close  one's  eyes 
to  vision  ladies  and  gentlemen  on  horseback  gal- 
loping toward  the  House,  moving  down  the  cool 
and  leafy  avenue  like  men  and  women  in  a  Gas- 
ton La  Touche  canvas.  One  had  only  to  shut 
away  the  purring  of  the  big  motor  to  hear  the 
more  beautiful  sound  of  laughter.  .  .  . 

There  were  the  rows  of  slave  huts,  just  as  we 
had  dreamed  they  should  be,  whitewashed,  their 
roofs  green  with  moss,  their  broad  brick  chim- 
neys crumbling  and  tipped!  No  spirals  of 
sweet-smelling  smoke  rose  from  the  cabin 
hearths,  but  we  had  only  to  shut  our  eyes  to  vi- 
sion the  crackling  pine  logs  lighting  the  single 
room  of  each  simple  dwelling,  and  to  see  the 
doorways  crowded  with  rollicking  pickaninnies. 
The  sun,  striking  through  openings  in  the  dense 
foliage  of  the  live  oaks,  fell  across  the  road  in 
bands  of  gold,  like  the  light  from  clerestory  win- 
dows. 

The  chocolate  chauffeur  stopped  the  car  be- 
[149] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

fore  one  of  the  cabins  and  called,  loudly  and  in- 
sistently, for  some  one  within. 

"Molly,"  he  cried,  "come  on  out  heah;  some 
one  wants  to  talk  to  you." 

We  had  never  heard  of  Molly,  so  we  were  nat- 
urally curious,  and  as  we  watched  the  door  of 
the  crumbling  cabin,  expecting  any  miracle  of 
such  a  miraculous  place,  an  old  negress  emerged 
from  the  shadows  and  came  slowly  toward  us. 
She  was  as  bent  and  as  gaunt  as  a  witch,  a  myriad 
wrinkles  puckered  her  black  skin,  she  wore  a 
scarlet  bandana  twisted  around  her  head  and 
tied  with  a  knot  in  front  like  the  tignon  of  Louis- 
iana. She  hobbled  over  to  us  and  made  a  feeble 
pretence  at  a  curtsey,  and  then,  in  a  cracked  and 
faltering  voice  she  wished  us  "good  day."  She 
was  the  oldest  woman  we  had  ever  seen,  older 
than  any  living  thing  on  the  face  of  the  earth, 
a  cinder,  a  handful  of  black  dust,  a  prehistoric 
mummy  kept  alive  by  some  invisible,  smoulder- 
ing spark,  a  creature  who  had  outlasted  the  past, 
projected  into  the  twentieth  century  by  some 
astounding  freak  of  nature. 

"Who  is  she?"  I  whispered. 

"She  was  a  slave,"  the  chocolate  chauffeur  an- 
swered, lighting  a  cigarette.  "Molly,  tell  us 
about  the  ole  times — befo'  the  wah." 

The  ancient  negress  shook  her  head  and  spoke 

[150] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

again  in  her  remote  and  quavering  voice.  "Ah've 
got  a  fever,"  she  said.    "Ah'm  dyin'." 

The  chauffeur  laughed.  "She  always  says 
that,"  he  explained.  "Give  her  a  qua'tah  and 
she'll  find  her  tongue." 

I  held  out  the  coin  and  the  old  woman's 
smooth,  cold  fingers  closed  over  mine  like  a  mon- 
key's paw.    "How  old  are  you?"  I  asked. 

"Mo'n  a  hundred,"  the  chauffeur  answered. 
"Ain't  you,  Molly?  She's  the  oldest  col'ud  lady 
in  Savannah.  Lived  right  heah  in  this  cabin  for 
seventy  yeahs.     Ain't  that  right,  Molly?" 

But  the  old  woman  would  not  answer.  She 
held  the  quarter  in  the  bright  pink  palm  of  her 
shrivelled  hand  and  gazed  at  it  fixedly  like  an 
ancient  ape  fascinated  by  the  flash  of  silver.  We 
drove  on  to  the  Big  House,  fearful  lest  it  might 
not  be  as  beautiful  as  we  had  dreamed  it  would 
be  and  that  the  magnificent  avenue  of  oaks  led 
only  to  disappointment. 

But  the  Big  House,  spared  miraculously  to 
delight  the  hearts  of  just  such  foolish  pilgrims 
as  Allan  and  I,  brought  a  shout  of  joy  from  us 
both.  The  gardens  were  weed-grown,  the  por- 
tico and  the  doorway  were  dilapidated  and  de- 
cayed, the  windows  were  dusty,  the  wide  roof 
sagged — but  it  was  the  Big  House  all  the  same! 
Ladies  in  ballooning  hoop  skirts  had  lived  there, 

[151] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

all  the  fiery  heroes  of  "befo'  the  wah"  literature 
had  loved  and  fought  and  lived  happily  ever 
after  in  that  very  house,  negro  potentates  in  liv- 
ery had  served  wonderful  dinners  in  the  great 
dining  room,  and  dancing  masters,  quaint  and 
graceful,  had  pranced  and  pirouetted  across  the 
polished  floor  of  the  drawing  room. 

While  we  stared  at  the  perfect  stage  setting  for 
the  pageant  of  Southern  romance,  a  howling 
mob  of  tattered,  barefooted  pickaninnies  dashed 
across  the  ruined  garden  and  surrounded  us. 
Their  rags  fluttered,  their  indescribably  round 
eyes  rolled  prodigiously.  "Dance  fo'  the  gen'- 
mun,"  they  shouted,  "dance  fo'  the  lady!  Ten 
cents!"  And  they  flapped  their  bare  feet  and 
snapped  their  fingers  and  slapped  their  ragged 
knees,  raising  a  cloud  of  pumpkin-coloured  dust. 
'Dance  fo'  the  gen-mun !  Ten  cents !  Tam-an-y !" 
They  danced  like  furious  dervishes  with  shrill 
screams,  rolling  their  bright  eyes  sideways  at  us, 
pawing  the  ground.  "Tam-an-y,"  they  sang, 
grinning  and  gasping,  "Tam-an-y!" 

Allan  tossed  a  quarter  to  them  and  they  fell 
on  it  in  a  tangled,  writhing  heap,  the  pink  soles 
of  their  bare  feet  waving  in  the  air,  their  faces 
buried  in  the  dust.  A  young  woman  with  a  baby 
in  her  arms,  who  had  followed  them,  shifted 
her  corn-cob  pipe  long  enough  to  ask  us  for 

[152] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

money,  and  I  shall  never  forget  the  strangeness 
of  the  tiny,  black  baby  hand  that  closed  over  my 
fingers  and  the  pennies.  "At  least,"  I  thought, 
"you  were  not  born  in  slavery,  you  poor  little 
baby."  But  there  were  tears  in  my  eyes.  The 
ragged  heap  on  the  ground  disentangled  itself 
and  became  ten  shrieking  pickaninnies  again. 
"Dance  fo'  the  gen-mun,"  they  began,  bursting 

into  song,  "dance  fo'  the  lady " 

But  the  chocolate  chauffeur,  apparently  dis- 
gusted, turned  the  car  away  and  hurried  back 
through  the  avenue  of  oaks  to  Savannah,  cover- 
ing the  five  miles  as  quickly  as  the  law  allows 
because  he  wanted  us  to  see  the  new  negro  quar- 
ter of  Savannah,  rows  and  rows  of  neat  frame 
and  brick  houses  that  have  taken  the  place  of 
the  one-room  cabins  of  ante-bellum  days.  He 
wanted  us  to  see  what  freedom  and  ambition 
have  done  for  him  and  for  others  like  him.  He 
was  ridiculously  proud  of  young  negresses  in 
white  shoes,  and  tipped  his  hat  to  them  as  we 
passed;  he  ran  slowly  through  the  narrow  streets 
of  the  quarter  so  that  we  might  see  pickaninnies, 
in  sailor  suits  and  socks,  riding  Kiddy-Kars 
along  the  sidewalks.  .  .  .  For  how  could  he 
have  known  that  rags  are  picturesque,  that  songs 
touch  the  heart,  that  simplicity  is  lovable,  that 
the  martyrdom  of  his  race  had  touched  our  imag- 

[153] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

ination  as  its  progress  in  neat  houses,  white  shoes 
and  Kiddy- Kars  never  will?  We  forgave  him 
everything,  for  we  realised  suddenly  that  we 
were  wrong  and  that  the  chocolate  chauffeur  was 
right.  We  had  been  demanding  an  eternal  rag- 
gedness  and  poverty  and  picturesque  ignorance 
for  our  own  purely  aesthetic  enjoyment.  Prog- 
ress is  not  beautiful  in  its  material  aspect  unless 
we  realise  the  urge  of  the  spirit  behind  it,  the 
imperceptible  but  powerful  lift  of  the  ugly 
sprout,  pushing  its  way  through  dingy  mud.  to- 
ward the  imperishable  light  of  realisation. 

We  skipped  over  the  rest  of  Savannah,  very 
humble  in  spirit,  finding  at  every  turn  of  the 
wheel  that  the  impassioned  hat-clerk  in  Charles- 
ton was  right  about  the  parks.  Savannah  was 
given  the  wrong  nickname,  for  City  of  Parks 
would  fit  her  more  exactly,  to-day  at  least,  than 
Forest  City.  A  whole  series  of  squares  and  lit- 
tle greens,  running  from  the  river  southward 
through  the  city,  is  the  chain  upon  which  Savan- 
nah has  strung  her  most  beautiful  buildings, 
clubs,  residences  and  monuments.  We  counted 
each  bead  on  this  long  rosary  of  loveliness,  dis- 
covering that  Savannah  is  not  the  sort  of  city 
that  pays  cash  for  its  fireworks  and  dodges  its 
taxes.     Savannah  dips  down  into  her  capacious 

[154] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

and  bulging  pocketbook  and  spends  money  lav- 
ishly to  beautify  herself. 

At  the  Bonaventure  Cemetery,  just  outside  the 
city,  we  saw  Spanish  moss  swinging  from  great 
trees  in  long,  silver-grey  streamers  that  brushed 
against  our  faces  as  we  drove  up  and  down  the 
broad  avenues.  It  was  infinitely  soft  to  the  touch, 
like  a  fine  seaweed,  and  swayed  rhythmically  in 
every  puff  of  wind.  I  cannot  tell  you  why  these 
enormous  streamers  should  have  seemed  beauti- 
ful to  us  when  the  strangling  growth  had  every- 
where else  been  repulsive  and  disfiguring  in  our 
eyes.  Perhaps  the  very  luxuriance  of  the  growth, 
the  prodigious  festoons,  endeared  those  particu- 
lar avenues  of  moss-draped  oaks  to  us.  People 
moved  about  among  the  swaying  pennants,  ap- 
pearing and  disappearing  like  dancers  seen 
against  some  forest  background  by  Gordon 
Craig,  a  fantastic  stage  setting  of  the  modern 
school. 

We  were  supposed  to  catch  a  train  that  left 
Savannah  for  Jacksonville  at  twenty  minutes  af- 
ter two,  so  we  hurried  through  the  ceremony  of 
"checking"  the  Golf  Club,  the  Yacht  Club,  the 
giant  skeleton  structure  of  the  new  Georgia  Ho- 
tel, a  few  geometric  suburbs  blossoming  with 
red-roofed  villas  and  avenues  of  palms  like 
forced  gardens  producing  orchids  out  of  the  des- 

[155] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

ert  sands,  and  hurried  back  to  the  hotel,  con- 
vinced, in  a  confused  way,  that  Savannah  is  rich 
and  jolly,  fond  of  sport,  up-to-date,  hospitable, 
self-sufficient  and  alert.  Like  all  other  cities, 
she  hides  her  fashionable  face  from  the  gaze  of 
tourists.  Elegance  rides  in  a  motor  or  sits  snugly 
behind  the  plate  glass  windows  of  a  club  or  dines 
discreetly  at  home.  Fashion  speaks  the  same 
language  the  world  over,  in  Paris,  Cairo,  Vien- 
na, London,  New  York  and — Savannah. 

The  train  to  Jacksonville  left  at  five  forty-five 
— the  weather  obstinately  interfering  with  sched- 
ules— and  it  was  not  until  very  late  that  evening 
that  we  found  ourselves  in  "Jax>"  tne  affectionate 
diminutive  of  an  affectionate  population  for  the 
gay  city  on  the  banks  of  the  St.  John's  River. 
We  found  ourselves  in  an  atmosphere  of  pea- 
soup  fog,  Florida  tourists  and  a  mysteriously 
transplanted  Broadway,  for  all  of  theatrical 
New  York  had  apparently  answered  the  resist- 
less call  of  the  Jacksonville  motion  picture  stu- 
dios. We  dined  in  the  midst  of  a  conflagration 
of  stars,  a  glittering  constellation  of  personali- 
ties. The  Lambs'  Club  promenaded  the  lobby 
of  the  hotel  while  we  sat  in  an  obscure  corner 
and  did  mental  multiplication  tables  of  their 
combined  salaries. 

I  was  very  tired.    I  stared  in  pathetic  wonder 

[156] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

at  the  beautiful  actresses  who  contrived  to  look 
so  rested. 

"Did  I  skip  too  lightly  over  Savannah?"  I 
asked,  fearful  of  the  answer  before  I  was  half- 
way through  the  question. 

Allan,  with  his  eyes  fixed  on  Madame  Petrova 
as  she  swayed  (actresses  always  do  sway,  don't 
they?)  down  the  lobby,  answered  positively, 
"We  saw  everything  there  was  to  see." 

"I  wonder,"  I  whispered.  Then  I  added  in  a 
savage  voice,  "I.  wish  I  were  an  actress." 

I  went  to  bed  haunted  by  my  inefficiency  and 
a  growing  determination  to  "study  up"  Savan- 
nah as  soon  as  I  got  back  to  New  York.  I  re- 
membered having  seen  Sherman's  headquarters 
in  Madison  Square — what  had  he  to  do  with 
Savannah?  "Sherman's  March  to  the  Sea"  ran 
through  my  mind  like  the  refrain  of  a  popular 
song,  but  I  could  not  remember  the  way  of  his 
marching.  My  dreams  were  of  Madame  Pet- 
rova founding  a  colony  on  the  Savannah  River 
in  1733  and  naming  it  Oglethorpe  after  the  hero 
of  the  play.  .  .  . 


;i57] 


CHAPTER  VII 

AN   AFTERNOON   IN   OLD   ST.    AUGUSTINE   AND   A 
CHRONICLE  OF  TIRE  TROUBLE 


DO  not  know  why  there  should  be  a 
mysterious  affinity  between  long, 
black  moustaches  and  yachting-caps, 
but  it  is  true  that  men  who  wear  the 
one  inevitably  affect  the  other.  We  encountered 
the  combination  on  the  morning  of  our  last  day 
in  Jacksonville.  The  fellow  had  a  motor  that 
he  was  willing  to  rent  to  any  one  who  was  foolish 
enough  to  rent  it  from  him,  and  he  captured  us 
on  the  very  doorstep  of  our  hotel. 

We  had  started  out  immediately  after  break- 
fast, lured  by  a  growing  determination  to  visit 
St.  Augustine  whether  it  rained  or  not,  and  be- 
cause the  newspapers  had  invited  us,  every  day 
for  a  week,  to  cross  the  river.  "Take  your  fairy 
across  the  ferry"  was  Jax's  morning  reminder 
that  Spanish  St.  Augustine,  the  crumbling  and 
dreamy  old-world  city,  could  be  reached  in  an 
hour  or  two  by  motor. 

Everything  conspired  to  our  miserable  down- 

[158] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

fall.  "Mr.  Foster's"  amanuensis  was  hemmed 
in  by  tourists  when  we  approached  her  desk, 
and  we  did  not  wait  to  ask  questions  about  St. 
Augustine  because  she  was  in  the  middle  of  a 
detailed  explanation,  patiently  given  to  an  in- 
attentive old  lady,  of  how  one  goes  from  Jack- 
sonville to  El  Paso  in  the  quickest  possible  time. 
When  we  turned  away  the  old  lady  was  saying, 
in  a  positive  tone,  "Now,  tell  me  how  to  get 
from  Jacksonville  to  Portsmouth,  New  Hamp- 
shire." We  knew  that  "Mr.  Foster's"  human 
time-table  was  quite  likely  to  be  creating  sched- 
ules for  the  old  lady  until  noon.  So  we  had  wan- 
dered out  of  doors,  hoping  to  fall  on  some  easy 
way  to  get  to  St.  Augustine,  and  had  fallen,  on 
the  very  doorstep,  upon  the  gentleman  of  the 
mustachios  and  the  yachting-cap.  His  motor 
was  for  hire.  He  offered  it,  with  the  driver,  for 
a  ridiculously  low  price.  He  waylaid  us,  hesi- 
tating in  the  doorway,  scented  our  uncertainty, 
divined  our  desire,  and  with  a  few  dramatic  and 
misleading  words,  he  visualised  a  trip  to  St. 
Augustine,  in  his  motor,  which  would  be  the 
crowning  experience  (I  am  using  his  phrase) 
of  our  Floridian  days. 

He  looked  like  a  rural  interpretation  of  the 
villain  in  melodrama;  his  dyed  moustaches 
drooped  fiercely,  his  yachting-cap  was  vaguely 

[159] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

distinguished,  his  watch  chain  glittered.  And 
we  were  charmed.  Finally,  of  course,  like  hyp- 
notised rabbits,  we  stepped  into  the  car  and 
agreed  to  pay  the  fellow's  price.  He  whisked 
away  the  "Car  for  Hire"  sign  which  adorned 
the  tonneau,  waved  his  long,  white  hand,  bowed 
to  us,  and  before  we  had  had  time  to  look  at  our 
bargain  we  had  rattled  briskly  up  the  street  on 
the  way  to  St.  Augustine. 

The  sun  had  come  out  tentatively,  not  as  if 
it  wished  to  really  gladden  the  hearts  of  the 
sneezing,  grippe-convalescent  Northern  hordes 
seeking  warmth  in  Florida,  but  rather  as  if  it 
were  trying  its  hand  at  Spring  weather  and  not 
quite  succeeding.  There  were  gusts  of  sharp 
wind  and  spatters  of  rain,  varied  now  and  then 
by  whole  half-hours  of  calm  and  sunny  beauty 
when  even  the  fruit  trees  might  have  been  fooled 
into  blooming  before  the  next  spilling  cloud 
nipped  the  ambitious  buds.  When  the  sun  shone 
at  all  it  shone  magnificently.  The  sky  cleared 
like  magic,  the  puddles  dried  and  the  whole 
countryside  was  fragrant  with  the  peculiar  sweet- 
ness of  a  freshly-washed  world.  We  stopped 
at  each  burst  of  hot  sunlight  and  lowered  the 
top  of  the  car,  only  to  be  caught  in  another  flurry 
of  rain  before  we  were  fairly  on  our  way  again. 
Finally  we  gave  up  trying  to  protect  ourselves 
[160] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

and  rode  uncovered  through  sun  and  rain  alike. 

The  ferry  crossing  was  enlivened  by  a  ear- 
ful of  movie-players  in  sulphurish  make-up  who 
were  on  their  way  to  some  "location"  across  the 
river.  I  think  they  enjoyed  our  curiosity  fully 
as  much  as  we  enjoyed  their  nearness;  movie- 
players  have  so  few  flesh  and  blood  audiences, 
and  I  don't  suppose  that  they  differ  from  the 
other  sort  of  player  in  that  they  like  to  be  ad- 
mired. 

The  road  to  St.  Augustine  is  for  the  most  part 
made  of  brick;  it  is  laid  as  neatly  and  as  exactly 
as  a  garden  path,  a  warm  red  in  colour,  not  in- 
harmonious with  the  landscape  but  certainly  not 
as  beautiful  as  the  white-shell-road.  We  had 
soon  passed  the  forlorn  and  undignified  suburbs 
of  Jacksonville  and  could  run  more  quickly. 
That  is,  we  started  out  by  running  quickly.  The 
rural  villain's  motor  was  a  1900  model;  it  rattled 
loosely  as  if  it  were  made  principally  of  tin  and 
chains.  Behind  the  young  driver's  back,  Allan 
and  I  exchanged  furious  glances.  I  blamed  him 
for  the  bargain,  he  blamed  me  for  not  having 
saved  him  from  it.  But  we  sat  in  silence,  a  si- 
lence full  of  tense  control,  and  listened  to  the 
grunts,  the  spittings,  the  spasmodic  and  hyster- 
ical explosions  of  the  motor.  The  brick  road 
[161] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

acted  as  a  sounding-board  and  increased  the  rat- 
tlings  and  reverberations  to  a  perfect  fury  of 
noise.  We  would  have  been  greeted  and  shamed 
by  small  boy  hoots  of  "Ice  wagon!"  in  the 
North.  But  small  boys  in  the  South  are  too 
polite  to  notice  a  vehicle  as  repulsive  as  ours. 
"I  told  you  so"  trembled  in  the  air. 

For  a  mile  or  so  the  car  went  forward  gin- 
gerly like  an  ancient  clock  making  a  final  effort 
to  round  off  an  hour  before  breaking  down.  And 
the  driver,  who  was  profoundly  ashamed  of  the 
whole  transaction,  urged  the  wheezing  motor  up 
to  forty-five  and  put  off  the  inevitable  disgrace 
by  letting  us  believe  that  we  would  be  in  St. 
Augustine  in  time  for  lunch. 

The  way  led  through  sandy  country  over- 
grown with  palmetto  scrub  or  tall,  spindling 
pines.  The  scrub  was  ornamental  but  the  pines 
had  been  slashed  and  hideously  scarred  in  the 
interests  of  the  turpentine  industry.  Each  one 
wore  a  tin  cup,  like  a  blind  beggar.  Set  well 
back  from  the  road  there  were  ramshackle  cot- 
tages, negro  shanties,  where  an  effort  had  been 
made  to  lure  a  few  vegetables  and  flowers  from 
the  sandy  soil.  But  the  scrub  and  the  pine  dom- 
inated the  landscape,  as  they  had  done  all  the 
way  from  North  Carolina,  through  South  Caro- 
lina, Georgia  and  into  Florida.     The  sameness 

[162] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

of  the  Southern  landscape  creates  a  feeling  of 
drowsiness  in  me;  everything  is  grey-green  or 
silver-grey — a  procession  of  two  tones  that  fi- 
nally lulls  me  to  sleep.  If  one  comes  from  the 
more  colourful  and  varied  North,  one  has  to  ad- 
just one's  sense  of  beauty  to  the  neutral  quality 
of  the  Southern  landscape.  I  remember  that 
when  I  used  to  leave  the  Austrian  Tyrol  in  the 
autumn  and  go  down  into  Italy,  I  had  to  adjust 
my  eyes  to  the  cindery  grey  of  the  upper  Apen- 
nines and  teach  myself  not  to  underestimate  the 
beauty  of  the  volcanic  slopes  above  Pistoja  be- 
cause I  had  learned  to  love  the  glorious  vitality, 
the  rich  greenness,  the  hardy  pine  growth  of 
Karnten.  The  American  South  has  a  sunny  and 
gentle  beauty  of  its  own,  a  delicacy  of  colour, 
an  endearing  and  elusive  charm.  The  unique 
appeal  of  the  country  lies  rather  in  its  small  cit- 
ies and  in  the  wide  stretches  of  sparsely  settled 
land  than  in  the  featureless  ugliness  of  its  large 
modern  cities. 

The  South  is  romantic,  and  its  romance  is  both 
historical  and  climatic.  There  is  a  gentleness  in 
its  skies,  a  softness  in  the  landscape,  a  leisurely, 
unkempt  grace  and  fascination  in  its  gardens. 
The  tragedy  of  the  past  rests  lightly  on  the 
South;  now  and  then  one  happens  upon  wist- 
ful reminders  of  a  dead  and  gone  magnificence 

[163] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

— a  crumbling  plantation  house,  a  weedy  gar- 
den, a  stately  mansion  given  over  to  official  uses 
or  sunken  into  poverty  and  decay.  But  while 
its  beauty  is  reminiscent,  the  South  is  not  melan- 
choly. The  love  of  it  deepens  in  one  as  the 
Spring  advances.  With  the  slow  flowering  of 
the  fruit  trees,  the  fresh  putting  out  of  bright 
new  leaves  against  the  polished  and  thickly  clus- 
tered foliage  of  the  oaks,  with  the  blossoming 
of  violets,  climbing  honeysuckle,  jessamine,  dog- 
wood and  starry  Cherokee  roses,  with  the  com- 
ing of  camellias  and  magnolias,  with  the  deep- 
ening warmth  of  the  fragrant  days  your  affec- 
tions are  ensnared,  you  linger,  and  in  the  end 
the  drowsy  South  holds  its  own  against  the  virile 
and  boisterous  North. 

"Bang!" 

"It's  a  tire,"  the  driver  explained. 

We  stopped  while  he  repaired  the  damage, 
and  we  got  out  to  "shake  a  leg"  over  a  quarter  of 
a  mile  of  the  John  Anderson  Brick  Highway. 
There  was  nothing  to  sketch  but  a  very  shabby 
cow  who  was  lipping  at  the  stiff  grass  on  the 
side  of  the  road,  so  Allan  photographed  me 
standing  by  the  car,  standing  in  the  car,  seated 
magnificently  in  the  tonneau  and  staring  off  at 
Florida,  helping  the  driver,  not  helping  the  dri- 
ver, and  posed  nonchalantly  near  the  cow.    The 

[164] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

driver  laboured,  his  face  scarlet  with  humilia- 
tion. He  knelt  in  the  road  with  streams  of  per- 
spiration dripping  off  the  end  of  his  nose.  I 
have  never  seen  a  man  who  perspired  more  reck- 
lessly or  more  completely.  I  pitied  him,  sitting 
coolly  in  the  lofty  tin  automobile. 

"There,"  he  said,  pausing  for  the  first  time 
to  mop  his  streaming  face,  "that  one's  fixed. 
Now  we'll  try  to  get  into  St.  Augustine  on  the 
others." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"Them  tires,"  he  explained,  "is  rotten." 

Rotten!  We  went  on  a  few  miles  further. 
The  sun  came  out  and  scorched  the  brick  road 
and  beat  on  the  tops  of  our  heads.  Bang!  This 
time  we  had  to  have  a  new  inner  tube.  The  dri- 
ver descended,  a  whole  kitful  of  tools  was  spread 
up  and  down  the  road,  the  car  was  jacked  up, 
the  wheel  came  off,  the  driver  began  to  perspire 
again.  An  hour  passed.  Other  cars  rolled 
smoothly  by  on  the  way  to  St.  Augustine,  blow- 
ing up  clouds  of  dust  that  settled  slowly  down 
on  us.  A  puddle  formed  under  the  driver's  nose. 
The  inner  tube  behaved  like  a  jack-in-the-box, 
and  leaped  out  of  the  casing  at  one  end  while 
the  driver  and  Allan  squeezed  it  in  at  the  other. 
The  iron  rim,  in  some  inexplicable  manner,  had 
expanded,  and  no  human  power  could  make  the 

[165] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

tire  fit  it  again.  We  hammered,  we  tugged.  The 
driver  gave  gallons  of  perspiration  to  the  task. 
I  wandered  away  into  a  pine  thicket  to  let  pro- 
fanity help  the  situation.  Another  hour  passed. 
And  all  the  while,  cool  carfuls  of  fashionable, 
veiled  ladies  shot  past  on  their  way  to  St.  Augus- 
tine and  lunch.  I  came  back  pitifully  to  ex- 
plain that  all  my  life  I  had  longed  to  see  St. 
Augustine,  that  it  was  the  city  of  my  dreams; 
I  said  that  I  was  going  to  Tampa  on  the  mor- 
row ("on  the  morrow"  suited  my  state  of  mind 
much  better  than  an  undramatic  "to-morrow") 
and  that  I  was  being  subjected  to  an  unmerited 
humiliation. 

The  driver  looked  up  at  me  through  a  maze 
of  moisture  and  explained  that  he  was  doing  his 
best.  Between  us  we  eventually  stuffed  the  live- 
ly inner  tube  into  the  tire  and  fitted  the  tire  it- 
self over  the  mysterious  elastic  iron  rim.  Then 
we  started  out  again,  and  because  all  three  of 
us  were  young  we  wiped  out  the  memory  of  the 
wasted  two  hours  and  spoke  buoyantly  of  lunch. 

Bang! 

But  this  time  it  didn't  really  matter.  We  were 
at  the  gates  of  Spanish  St.  Augustine.  We  sent 
the  humiliated  driver  and  the  tin  automobile 
ahead  in  search  of  a  garage  and,  God  willing, 
convalescence,  while  we  passed  through  the  fa- 
[166] 


THE  SPANIARDS  CALLED  THEIR  FORT  THE  CASTLE  SAN 
MARCO 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

mous  old  gates  on  foot.  Lunch  could  wait,  for 
here  was  beauty.  I  cannot  imagine  a  nobler 
portal  to  romance  and  antiquity.  Directly  be- 
yond, facing  the  wide  blue  of  Matanzas  Bay,  the 
great  fort  lay  across  our  path.  Behind  us,  Jack- 
sonville and  the  Twentieth  Century,  noise,  ugli- 
ness and  the  commonplace — 

We  crossed  the  wide  green  to  the  fort,  and 
not  waiting  to  examine  the  wide  moat  or  the 
dungeons,  went  at  once  to  the  terreplein  where 
we  could  see  the  whole  magnificent  sweep  of 
white  beaches  and  dunes,  the  marshlands,  the 
Bay,  Anastasia  Island  with  its  curious,  Christ- 
mas-candy lighthouse,  and  the  roofs  and  towers 
of  St.  Augustine. 

The  fortress  rises  superbly  in  the  centre  of  a 
broad  open  space  and  it  is  near  the  sea,  so  that 
its  massive  coquina  walls  are  stained  by  storm 
and  wind  with  all  the  pearly  opalescence  of  an 
oyster  shell.  It  is  woefully  misnamed  Fort  Ma- 
rion after  a  Revolutionary  general  who  had  noth- 
ing to  do,  as  far  as  I  could  discover,  with  the 
history  of  the  fortress.  The  Spaniards,  who 
ruled  St.  Augustine  uninterruptedly  (save  for  a 
twenty  years'  British  occupation)  from  1565  un- 
til 1 82 1,  called  their  fort  the  Castle  San  Marco. 
And  San  Marco  it  should  be  to-day;  the  softer 
[167] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Latin  name  suits  the  essentially  Spanish  pile  as 
its  patriotic  misnomer  never  could. 

Although  Ponce  de  Leon  landed  near  St.  Au- 
gustine in  1 5 13  and  was  inspired  to  name  his 
discovery  Florida,  he  did  not  find  the  fountain 
of  youth  he  had  set  out  for,  and  returned  to  Spain 
without  having  established  a  colony.  The 
Huguenots  came  next,  seeking  refuge  from  reli- 
gious persecution  in  what  must  have  seemed  to 
them  a  problematical  world,  a  mirage;  they 
crossed  the  ocean  in  two  ships  under  Captain 
Jean  Ribaut  and  landed  not  far  from  St.  Au- 
gustine on  what  proved  to  be  very  tangible 
ground.  But  Ribaut  had  to  go  back  to  France 
for  a  larger  company  and  for  supplies;  he  sailed 
away,  leaving  twenty-five  of  his  men  in  Florida 
to  hold  the  beautiful  mirage  in  the  name  of  God 
and  France. 

The  twenty-five  held  on  until  their  provisions 
had  given  out,  until  hope  had  died,  until  their 
beautiful  mirage  seemed  only  a  hateful  and  atro- 
cious prison.  For  Ribaut  did  not  return.  He 
was  in  France  trying  to  raise  money,  a  feat  that 
was  as  hard  to  accomplish  in  1563  as  it  is  now, 
when  rich  citizens  clap  their  hands  over  their 
purses  at  the  mere  approach  of  an  idealist.  Ri- 
baut begged  while  the  twenty-five  stranded  Hu- 
guenots starved  in  Florida.    And  finally,  when 

[168] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

they  had  given  up  all  hope  of  him,  they  tried  to 
cross  the  ocean  in  a  fragile  cockleshell  of  their 
own  construction.  At  sea  their  supplies  gave 
out  altogether  and  the  desperate  Huguenots 
faced  a  hideous  problem.  They  cast  lots — and 
the  gruesome  game  was  played  with  who  knows 
what  deadly  seriousness  or  atrocious  playfulness 
— for  the  life  of  one  man  who  should  sacrifice 
himself  for  the  others.  One  of  the  twenty-five 
lost  and  gave  himself  in  an  appalling  martyr- 
dom. The  rest  were  rescued  by  an  English 
ship  and  played  no  further  part  in  St.  Augus- 
tine's history. 

De  Laudonniere,  another  Huguenot  of  vast 
courage  and  superb  credulity,  landed  in  St.  Aug- 
ustine the  following  year.  He  did  not  settle 
there,  but  with  the  help  of  friendly  Indians  built 
a  fort  on  the  James  River.  The  tardy  Ribaut 
arrived  in  time  to  reinforce  De  Laudonniere, 
and  St.  Augustine  and  its  vicinity  might  have 
become  Huguenot  if  Philip  II  of  Spain  had  not 
chanced  to  hear  that  the  little  band  of  heretics 
had  settled  themselves  in  Florida,  thereby  en- 
croaching on  Spanish  North  America  and  de- 
filing a  Catholic  hemisphere. 

Pedro  Menendez  de  Avilas  was  sent  on  the 
pious  mission  of  destruction.  He  so  burned  to 
destroy  the  detested  Lutherans  that  he  spent  his 
[169] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

entire  fortune  in  equipping  an  expedition  of  two 
thousand  six  hundred  people.  Nor  did  he  for- 
get to  include  in  his  company  twenty-six  priests 
who  were  to  save  the  soul  of  any  Huguenot  who 
might  repent  or  who  might  remember,  in  his  ex- 
treme moment,  that  he  belonged  to  the  old  faith. 
Bloodshed  and  salvation,  cruelty  and  religion, 
the  most  ferocious  hatred  and  the  most  exalted 
fanaticism  brought  the  first  permanent  settlers 
to  America  fifty-five  years  before  the  Pilgrims 
set  foot  on  Plymouth  Rock.  The  Spaniards  es- 
tablished themselves  at  St.  Augustine  and  turned 
their  attention  immediately  to  the  extermination 
of  the  Huguenots.  Ribaut,  who  attempted  to  re- 
taliate from  the  sea,  was  shipwrecked,  and  Lau- 
donniere  with  the  few  survivors  of  the  James 
River  colony  fled  back  to  France. 

Ribaut's  shipwrecked  crew  surrendered  to  the 
mercy  of  Menendez.  They  would  better  have 
taken  refuge  with  the  Indians  for  the  conscien- 
tious Hidalgo  had  no  pity,  although  there  was 
perhaps  a  shadow  of  gentlemanly  consideration 
in  his  soul.  He  had  his  miserable  captives  led 
out  of  sight  of  their  comrades  with  bound  hands. 
And  then  he  had  them  stabbed,  ten  at  a  time,  in 
the  back.  Two  hundred  died  the  first  day;  the 
rest,  one  hundred  and  fifty,  in  batches  of  ten 
were  stabbed  with  true  mediaeval  courtesy  on  the 
[170] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

following  day.    Nor  "by  the  grace  of  God"  did 
Ribaut  escape. 

Apparently  Menendez  had  no  quarrel  with 
his  victims,  but  insisted  that  he  had  killed  them, 
"not  as  Frenchmen  but  as  Lutherans,"  as  if  blot- 
ting out  a  Huguenot  soul  was  as  unimportant  as 
stepping  on  a  beetle.  The  white  sands  of  St. 
[Augustine  were  consecrated  by  the  blood  of  the 
heroic  Frenchmen  who  had  surrendered  them- 
selves in  all  good  faith  to  a  "merciful"  enemy. 
They  were  avenged  three  years  later  by  De 
Gourges,  who  captured  one  of  Menendez'  gar- 
risons when  the  Spaniard  was  away  and  hanged 
the  defenders  to  the  very  trees  where  so  many 
Huguenots  had  swung.  He  was  a  complete 
avenger  with  a  nice  sense  of  humour,  for  he 
placarded  the  hanged  Spaniards  with  a  neat 
parody  on  Menendez'  apology:  "I  do  this  not 
as  unto  Spaniards,  nor  as  outcasts,  but  as  traitors, 
thieves  and  murderers."  The  confusion  of  the 
grammar  detracted  nothing  from  the  straightfor- 
wardness of  De  Gourges'  intentions;  he  was  pos- 
sibly overwrought  when  he  penned  the  thrust. 
But  Menendez  saw,  and  while  he  parsed  the  jest 
he  reviewed  his  own  soul.  He  established  mis- 
sions as  far  north  as  Chesapeake  Bay  and  as  far 
south  as  Cape  Florida,  and  then  feeling  that  his 
military  and  spiritual  duty  had  been  done,  he 
[171] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

returned  to  Spain.  To  console  you,  in  case  you 
feel  that  De  Gourges'  vengeance  lacked  com- 
pleteness, I  will  write  Menendez'  epitaph.  He 
died  of  a  fever,  when  only  fifty  years  of  age, 
"somewhere  in  Spain." 

He  had  at  least  won  Florida  for  Spain  with 
comparatively  little  bloodshed.  When  one 
thinks  what  Alsace  and  Lorraine  have  cost 
France,  what  the  winning  back  of  the  Trentino 
has  cost  Italy,  the  murder  of  a  handful  of 
Huguenots  seems  a  merciful  matter.  St.  Augus- 
tine remained  under  Spanish  rule  for  nearly 
three  centuries.  The  history  of  the  place  was 
lively  enough  to  have  satisfied  the  most  ad- 
venture-loving settlers  of  those  adventurous 
days.  There  were  massacres,  Indian  raids, 
fights  with  buccaneers  and  raiders,  bitter 
quarrels  with  the  English  settlers  of  the  Caro- 
linas.  And  all  the  while,  in  spite  of  the 
reluctance  of  the  kings  of  Spain  to  send  funds 
for  the  building  of  a  fort  which  cost  thirty  mil- 
lion dollars,  San  Marco  rose  stone  by  stone  on 
the  outskirts  of  St.  Augustine.  Slaves  and  In- 
dian prisoners  did  the  greatest  part  of  the  work, 
carrying  the  blocks  of  coquina  from  the  quar- 
ries, two  miles  below  Anastasia  lighthouse,  to 
the  bay,  where  they  were  loaded  on  barges  and 
ferried  across  to  the  Castle.  The  fortress  was 
[172] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

begun  in  1665,  but  it  was  not  until  1765  that  the 
Spanish  coat-of-arms  was  finally  placed  over  the 
great  entrance  together  with  the  inscription  in 
Spanish  which  says  that  "Don  Fernandez  the 
Sixth  being  King  of  Spain,  and  Field  Marshal 
Don  Alonzo  Fernandez  de  Herreda  Governor 
and  Captain-General  of  the  city  of  St.  Augus- 
tine, Florida,  and  its  province,  this  fortress  was 
finished  in  the  year  1765.  The  works  were  di- 
rected by  the  Captain-Engineer,  Don  Pedro  de 
Brazas  y  Garay." 

Long  before  Don  Pedro  de  Brazas  y  Garay 
took  the  glory  of  the  building  for  himself,  San 
Marco  had  had  its  baptism  of  fire.  Governor 
Moore  of  Carolina  had  made  no  impression  on 
its  massive  walls,  but  he  had  succeeded  in  hold- 
ing the  inhabitants  of  St.  Augustine  barricaded 
in  the  fortress  for  three  months.  Thirteen  years 
later  Governor  Oglethorpe  came  down  from 
Carolina  and  threw  one  hundred  and  fifty  shells 
into  the  fort  and  the  town.  He  might  have  suc- 
ceeded in  starving  out  the  besieged  Spaniards 
if  he  had  not  been  driven  away  by  clouds  of  poi- 
sonous mosquitoes.  His  bitten  and  outraged  sol- 
diers refused  to  endure  the  humiliating  torment 
and  Oglethorpe  had  to  return  empty-handed  to 
Carolina. 

During  the  British  occupation,  St.  Augustine, 

[173] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

which  had  been  nothing  but  a  military  post,  be- 
came an  active  seaport,  and  there  was  a  lively 
coming  and  going  of  schooners  and  square-rig- 
gers in  the  broad,  beach-fringed  bay.  Ships 
from  London  and  Liverpool,  New  York  and 
Charleston  put  in  at  St.  Augustine  with  supplies; 
some  of  them  brought  negro  slaves.  They  set 
sail  again  with  full  cargoes  of  indigo  and  naval 
stores.  To-day  there  are  no  traces  of  this  ac- 
tivity. Matanzas  Bay  is  a  gentle  sheet  of  water, 
ideal  for  the  leisurely  houseboat  or  for  an  oc- 
casional pleasure  steamer  bearing  tourists  to  St. 
Augustine  from  Jacksonville,  or  from  St.  Aug- 
ustine to  the  bathing-beaches  of  the  more  north- 
ern shore.  Where  the  great  square-rigged  ships 
rode  magnificently  there  are  now  noisy,  explos- 
ive launches  skimming  back  and  forth,  cutting 
a  threadlike  wake  across  the  polished  surface  of 
the  water. 

At  the  close  of  the  Revolution  England  ceded 
the  valuable  province  back  to  Spain,  but  it  is 
not  known  how  many  of  the  Spaniards  who  had 
fled  British  dominion  returned  to  St.  Augustine. 
The  town  had  not  fully  taken  on  its  Spanish  im- 
print when  the  United  States  paid  five  million 
dollars  for  Florida  and  got  themselves  in  for  a 
trouble  which  had  been  brewing  for  years — 
the  Seminole  War. 

[174] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

We  wondered,  looking  down  the  steep  sides 
of  San  Marco,  how  it  could  have  withstood  its 
past,  solid  and  impregnable  as  it  is.  The  sentry- 
boxes  and  the  watch-tower  are  still  standing,  and 
the  combined  efforts  of  all  the  besiegers  have 
only  succeeded  in  peppering  the  thick  walls. 
Yet  I  suppose  that  one  shell  dropped  into  San 
Marco  from  a  modern  warship  would  powder 
its  mediaeval  curtains,  those  "curtains  and  bas- 
tions made  of  solid  silver"  which  swallowed  up 
so  many  galleon  loads  of  Spanish  riches,  into  a 
scattered  and  obliterated  dust-heap.  The  cen- 
tury of  toil,  the  long  procession  of  negroes  and 
captive  Indians  bearing  coquina  blocks,  have 
built  a  seventh  wonder  of  the  New  World,  a 
tourist  treasure  house  where  home-towners,  with 
their  wives  and  their  daughters,  come  to  gape 
at  an  architecture  which  is  beyond  their  under- 
standing, and  to  be  touched,  perhaps  for  the  first 
time,  by  a  beauty  which  is  both  romantic  and 
historical. 

Tribes  of  desperate  tourists,  generaled  by  a 
guide,  pursued  us  around  the  terreplein  and  fi- 
nally drove  me  headlong  into  the  watch-tower. 
I  fled  upwards  in  a  spiral  and  was  knocked  on 
top  of  my  head  by  a  cross-beam  which  drove  my 
hat  over  my  ears  and  deprived  me  of  sight,  hear- 
ing and  the  power  of  speech.  So  that  when  the 
[175] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

tourist  horde  arrived,  instead  of  being  in  ex- 
clusive and  aristocratic  possession  of  the  watch- 
tower,  I  was  sitting  in  a  dazed  state  half-way 
up  the  staircase,  brushing  stars  out  of  my  eyes. 

They  clustered  about  me  while  their  guide 
explained  the  watch-tower,  like  the  fellow  in 
Madame  Tussaud's  Wax  Works,  with  a  total 
disregard  for  punctuation.  I  assumed  the  part 
of  a  scalped  settler — done  in  wax — and  escaped 
attention.  The  guide  explained  in  a  nasal  voice, 
acute  and  toneless,  with  erratic  pauses  for 
breath: 

"The  fort  has  four  nearly  equal  bastions 
known  as  St.  Peter,  St.  Paul,  St.  Augustine  and 
St.  Charles  and  four  (pause  for  breath)  con- 
necting walls  called  curtains  ladies  and  gentle- 
men you  will  kindly  notice  that  there  are  sentry 
towers  on  three  of  the  (pause  for  breath)  bas- 
tions while  you  are  now  looking  at  a  tower  which 
commands  a  view  of  both  land  and  sea."  He 
might  have  added,  "also  of  a  young  woman  who 
has  banged  her  head  on  a  cross-beam  and  is  in  a 
state  of  semi-consciousness,"  but  he  didn't.  He 
went  on,  with  a  dramatic  gesture  and  no 
commas:  "The  walls  are  twelve  feet  thick  at  the 
base  nine  at  the  top  and  twenty-five  feet  high 
ladies  and  gentlemen  you  will  (pause  for  breath) 
now  follow  me  and  I  will  lead  you  into  the  inner 
[176] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

court  or  plaza  which  is  one  hundred  feet  square." 
The  home-towners,  with  a  blank  expression, 
turned  as  one  man  and  trotted  at  his  heels. 

'That  fellow  knows  a  lot,"  Allan  remarked 
with  admiration  and  respect.  "I'm  going  to  fol- 
low him.    That's  an  easy  way  to  get  history." 

He  had  joined  the  home-towners  before  I 
could  protest,  and  I  had  to  reel  in  pursuit  down 
the  steep  ramp  (which  I  vaguely  remembered 
as  having  been  used  as  the  background  for  count- 
less movie  dramas  and  where  I  had  seen  my 
favourite  hero  fight  a  magnificent  duel) ,  down  to 
the  plaza  and  into  the  cool  darkness  of  the  dun- 
geon. Through  all  that  maze  of  passageways, 
court  rooms,  council  chambers  and  casemates 
there  is  an  intoxicating  odour  of  antiquity,  a 
delicious  combining  of  crumbling  stone  and 
musty,  sunbaked  walls,  an  odour  of  mould  that 
is  like  the  ghost  of  incense  and  old  books.  It 
took  me  by  the  nose  and  by  the  soul,  that  rare 
sweet  smell  of  ancient  wood  and  ancient  stone, 
the  faintly  aromatic  dust  of  centuries.  Outside, 
the  sanded  courtyard  of  the  fortress  blazed  like 
a  mirror  in  the  hot,  white  sunlight,  little  knots 
of  tourists  crossing  and  recrossing  it  kicking 
up  spirals  of  dust.  It  must  have  looked  the  same 
to  Osceola  when  he  was  confined  in  the  court- 
room after  his  capture  by  General  Hernandez. 
[177] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

He  carved  shallow  niches  in  the  coquina  walls 
of  his  prison  so  that  he  could  lift  himself  up  to 
the  grating  and  stare  out  at  the  patch  of  sun- 
flooded  courtyard  that  was  all  he  could  see  of  the 
world.  The  guide's  voice  echoed  around  the 
room  where  the  great  Chief  spent  nearly  a  year, 
while  the  home-towners  gaped  at  the  pathetic 
niches  or  scratched  furtive  signatures  on  the 
walls,  wanting,  for  some  obscure  and  inexpli- 
cable reason,  to  associate  themselves  with  the 
tragic  and  heroic  dead. 

The  story  of  Osceola  is  bitter  and  humiliating 
in  perspective.  The  Seminoles,  like  so  many 
of  the  Indian  nations  of  North  America,  inter- 
fered with  the  white  settlers'  scheme  of  things. 
It  was  suggested  that  they  move  south  of  the 
Withlacooche  or  west  of  the  Mississippi;  there 
were  threatenings  and  cruelties,  deceptions  and 
treaties  which  bore  a  pathetic  resemblance  to  a 
certain  famous  "scrap  of  paper."  If  the  Semi- 
noles could  have  been  erased  from  the  face  of 
the  earth,  the  Americans  would  have  wiped  the 
slate  clean  with  a  clear  conscience.  But  it  is 
not  easy  to  dispose  of  five  thousand  people,  hard- 
er still  to  deprive  them  of  their  hereditary  farm- 
lands, their  homes  and  their  hunting  grounds. 
The  inevitable  war  began  with  the  massacre 
of  Major  Dade's  men  and  lasted  for  seven  years. 

[178] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

Osceola  was  the  Petain  of  the  Seminoles,  a  fear- 
less, expert,  keenly  intelligent  chief,  a  danger- 
ous enemy  and  a  man  of  extraordinary  honesty. 
The  story  of  his  capture  makes  bitter  reading 
and  I  will  not  repeat  it  here.  I  would  like  to 
believe  that  it  was  the  only  instance  in  American 
history  of  the  violation  of  a  truce,  and  that  when 
General  Jessup  and  General  Hernandez  cap- 
tured the  unarmed  and  unsuspecting  chief  they 
were  influenced  in  some  nameless  and  inexpli- 
cable way  by  the  tragic  atmosphere  of  San  Mar- 
co; I  would  like  to  believe  that  their  spirits  were 
tinged  by  an  alien  treachery,  changed  mysteri- 
ously, inbued  with  the  hates,  the  deceits,  the  in- 
stabilities, of  a  mediaeval  and  Latin  past. 

Osceola  was  taken  seven  miles  from  St.  Aug- 
ustine and  was  imprisoned  in  San  Marco  with 
two  other  Seminoles,  King  Philip's  son  Coa- 
choochee  and  Hadjo  the  medicine  man.  Coa- 
choochee  and  Hadjo  dug  niches  in  the  steep 
walls  of  the  court-room  and  climbed  eighteen 
feet  to  the  ventilator,  where  they  somehow  man- 
aged to  squeeze  through  the  iron  bars  and 
drop  into  the  moat.  Coachoochee  had  torn 
his  blankets  into  strips  and  was  able  to  break  his 
fall  by  sliding  down  the  improvised  rope;  but 
Hadjo  tumbled  twenty-five  feet  into  the  moat, 
landing  like  a  cat,  apparently,  on  his  feet.  He 
[179] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

escaped,  and  history  says  nothing  of  his  bruises. 

Osceola  stayed,  strangely  steadfast  considering 
the  manner  of  his  capture.  Of  his  people,  only 
a  few  hundred  remained,  and  his  own  martyr- 
dom lasted  scarcely  a  year.  The  guide,  point- 
ing to  a  hideous  painted  effigy  of  the  great  Semi- 
nole, swung  into  a  comma-less  eulogy  delivered 
at  top  speed,  as  if  he  were  afraid  that  the  inner 
workings  of  his  speechmaking  were  on  the  verge 
of  breaking  down.  And  all  the  while  his  eye  ap- 
praised the  home-towners,  his  attentive  ear  heard 
the  tentative  clinkings  of  quarters  and  dimes. 
...  I  felt  as  ashamed  as  if  the  unhappy  ghost 
were  hovering  over  my  head,  appraising  my  vul- 
gar curiosity,  the  blank  stares  of  the  home-town- 
ers, the  weariness  of  the  guide.  .  .  .  I  fled,  leav- 
ing Allan  to  pay,  not  for  elemosine,  but  for  punc- 
tuation. 

Lunch  lay  somewhere  in  the  centre  of  the 
town,  over  by  that  cluster  of  Andalusian  towers 
and  roofs  which  rose  above  the  simple  one  and 
two-storied  houses  of  the  residential  and  business 
quarters  like  the  high-flung,  scarlet  peaks  of  the 
Certosa  di  Pavia.  An  ancient  darkey,  encount- 
ered on  the  green  before  San  Marco,  pointed  out 
the  way.  He  had  "lucky  beans"  for  sale  in  ex- 
change for  information,  which  seemed  to  me  a 
polite  and  supremely  well-bred  way  to  earn  a 

[180] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

living.  You  simply  get  in  the  way  of  confused 
strangers,  put  them  on  the  right  path,  and  then 
suggest  in  a  winsome  voice  that  a  lucky  bean, 
worn  in  the  sole  of  the  shoe,  is  a  counter-irritant 
for  blue  devils.  If  the  confused  stranger  hap- 
pens to  be  a  sport,  and  a  surprising  number  of 
people  are,  he  falls  for  the  bean — and  the  infor- 
mation. (Wallingford  please  notice!)  This  is 
better  stuff  than  blind  and  dumb  beggary,  far, 
far  better  stuff  than  the  antics  of  the  postcard 
pest;  it  smacks  of  honesty  and  good  breeding. 
Allan  bought  two  beans,  and  feeling  that  the 
war  ought  to  encourage  thrift,  I  asked  another 
question. 

"Where  is  the  fountain  of  youth,  Uncle?" 

The  ancient  darkey  was  no  more  certain  of 
the  life-giving  spring  than  poor  Ponce  de  Leon 
had  been.  He  scratched  his  head  and  answered 
sadly,  "Ah  disremember." 

"Why,  you  ought  to  know,"  I  said,  and  he 
beamed  at  the  compliment. 

"Ah  disremember,"  he  insisted.  "Ah  never 
can  seem  to  recollect  whichever  fountain  it  is. 
Seems  like  it  moves.  Yes,  m'am,  it  moves!  When 
Ah  was  a  l'il  boy  it  was  over  yonder.  Nex'  time 
Ah  come  to  look  foh  it,  it  was  down  yonder. 
And  now  Ah've  disremembered  where  they've 

[181] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

done  put  it.  Yessah,  that  fountain  of  youth  don' 
stay  whar  it  belongs  mo'n  a  yeah  at  a  time." 

Allan  whispered  fiercely  in  my  ear,  as  fiercely 
as  it  is  possible  to  whisper,  "Don't  ask  him  an- 
other question.     I  haven't  any  change!" 

So  I  fell  into  the  historical  habit  and  aban- 
doned the  quest.  It  doesn't  matter  about  youth, 
anyway,  when  one  is  young.  It  is  only  after- 
ward, when  the  precious  gift  is  lost,  that  one 
would  like  to  find  the  crystal  source  and  drink 
long  and  deep.  If  we  could  only  have  youth 
after  age!  Youth  is  so  often  tragic  in  its  igno- 
rance, its  profligacy,  its  unawareness,  if  I  can 
put  it  that  way !  I've  often  wished  that  the  whole 
scheme  of  things  could  be  reversed;  that  we 
could  be  born  old,  wise,  disciplined,  weary, 
rheumatic  and  world-seasoned,  and  that  we 
could  pass  with  the  years  into  a  glorious,  con- 
scious youth.  My  idea  of  heaven  is  not  com- 
plex— we  shall  be  old-young,  we  shall  walk  with 
the  free  gait  of  children,  we  shall  leap  and  rol- 
lick, climb  and  prance;  we  shall  be  sturdy,  beau- 
tiful and  invincibly  unafraid,  and  we  shall  be  as 
old  as  the  old  world. 

St.  Augustine  has  learned  the  secret  of  young 
old  age.  The  crumbling  walls  of  the  unpreten- 
tious houses  are  stained  ochre  and  blue  and  rose 
after  the  Latin  fashion  so  prevalent  in  Spain  and 

[182] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

in  Southern  Italy;  the  doors  open  out  directly 
on  the  street  and  invite  friendliness;  there  are 
pleasant  gardens,  sometimes  set  behind  walls 
and  not  seldom  blooming  in  the  very  dooryards 
or  brightening  a  business  street  with  staccato 
poinsettias  and  flowering  bushes.  Wherever  the 
disastrous  fire  of  I9i4has  spared  the  wooden  and 
coquina  houses  of  the  old  Spanish  period,  there 
are  delightful  jutting  balconies  shadowed  by 
steeply  sloping  roofs  and  often  hung  with  big- 
nonia  vines  or  thick  curtains  of  ivy.  The  town 
is  sparsely  built  over  a  wide  area  in  the  leisurely 
manner  of  the  past,  and  even  the  intrusion  of 
modern  "villas"  and  frame  houses  designed  to 
meet  the  home-towners'  "rooming"  needs  has 
failed  to  spoil  the  beauty  of  the  narrow  streets. 

St.  Augustine  has  fallen  into  a  gentle  and 
wholly  delightful  shabbiness  since  the  passing  of 
its  climax  of  prosperity.  The  "Great  Freeze" 
drove  the  more  fashionable  Northerners  further 
south,  to  the  gay,  made-to-order  resorts,  Palm 
Beach  and  Miami,  where  they  are  willing  to  de- 
posit a  "guarantee"  of  their  spending  capacity 
in  exchange  for  the  dubious  pleasure  of  paying 
four  times  what  everything  they  buy  is  really 
worth.  St.  Augustine  has  been  left  on  the  fringe 
of  the  fashionable  tide  of  Southern  travel;  its 
great  hotels  catch  eddies  of  the  stream  early  in 

[183] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

the  season,  when  a  few  travellers  break  the  long 
journey  there;  and  again  in  the  spring  the  re- 
turning rush  drifts  in  and  around  the  old  Span- 
ish town  before  it  finally  faces  North  again.  Bui: 
it  is  no  longer  chic  to  take  a  house  in  St.  Augus- 
tine for  the  entire  season.  Fashion  pursued  the 
fox-trot,  the  Hawaiian  orchestra,  the  high  cost 
of  living  and  publicity  to  a  warmer  climate,  and 
left  St.  Augustine  to  drift  year  by  year  into  a  lov- 
able seediness,  an  endearing  informality,  so  that 
it  has  become  itself  again  after  a  period  of  ex- 
citement and  ostentation.  The  greatest  number 
of  its  winter  visitors  are  from  the  Middle  West. 
They  are  not  fashionable  and  they  are  easily 
amused.  St.  Augustine  can  be  herself  with  them ; 
she  does  not  have  to  make  her  sandy,  meandering 
driveways  into  boulevards  or  trim  her  neglected 
gardens  or  go  into  business  or  pretend  to  be  a 
modern  city.  The  home-towners  are  a  comfort- 
able lot,  not  over-imaginative;  they  will  never 
notice  that  St.  Augustine  is  getting  to  be  a  little 
out  of  style  and  that  Flagler's  second  sweetheart, 
Palm  Beach  (the  hussy!),  has  walked  away  with 
most  of  her  admirers.  The  home-towner  loves 
St.  Augustine. 

We  encountered  him  all  the  way  across  St. 
George  Street,  sauntering  in  the  warm  sunlight 
(for  the  sun  had  come  out  for  good)  with  his 

[184] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

home-town  paper  in  his  pocket  and  an  air  of 
purposeful  holiday-making  about  him.  The 
postcard  shops  were  doing  a  lively  business,  and 
I  daresay  that  the  evening  post  to  the  Middle 
West  went  burdened  with  coloured  views  of  San 
Marco  and  the  Anastasia  lighthouse  and  many 
harmlessly  exaggerated  accounts  of  "tropic" 
Florida,  palms,  flowers,  oysters  and  alligators. 

The  only  alligator  we  saw  in  Florida  occu- 
pied a  stone  bathtub  in  the  Plaza,  and  we  paused 
on  our  way  across  the  square  to  hang  on  the  rim 
of  his  prison  and  admire  the  few  bumpy  bits  of 
his  anatomy  that  showed  above  the  brackish 
water.  His  eyes  were  closed  and  he  wore  a  ter- 
rible smile,  like  the  fixed  grin  of  a  prehistoric 
mummy.  He  was  loathsome  and  as  immovable 
as  a  stone,  and  although  we  would  have  liked  to 
join  the  circle  of  small  boys  who  had  attached 
themselves  to  the  railing  in  a  hopeless  passion 
for  the  inscrutable  reptile,  we  really  had  to  have 
lunch. 

We  had  fixed  on  the  Ponce  de  Leon  as  the 
ideal  place  for  that  ceremony,  but  when  we  stood 
in  King  Street  between  Hastings'  two  master- 
pieces, the  Ponce  de  Leon  and  the  newer  Alca- 
zar, we  decided  in  favour  of  the  less  famous  of 
the  two.  The  Ponce  de  Leon's  terra  cotta  tow- 
ers and  wide-flung  roofs  are  perhaps  too  magnifi- 
es] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

cent  for  a  town  as  architecturally  simple  as  St. 
Augustine.  We  turned  into  the  Alcazar  because 
we  liked  its  beautiful  facade  and  the  truly  Span- 
ish courtyard  filled  with  the  splash  and  tinkle  of 
fountain  jets  and  blazing  with  flowers.  Here, 
we  were  in  the  fashionable  atmosphere  again. 
Young  men  in  white  flannels  lounged  in  the  cor- 
ridors, discreet  children  rolled  hoops  along  the 
garden  walks  and  very  modern  young  women  sat 
decoratively  about  in  summer  gowns.  Outside, 
in  the  streets  of  simple  St.  Augustine,  the  natives 
were  wearing  overcoats  and  furs,  and  complain- 
ing bitterly  of  the  cold.  Fashion  said,  "This  is 
a  winter  resort;  it  is  supposed  to  be  warm,"  and 
wore  white.  The  same  thing  happened  in  Cairo 
and  Palermo,  Biskra  and  Monte  Carlo  before 
the  war.  One  shivered,  but  tradition  kept  win- 
ter flannels  under  lock  and  key. 

We  had  lunch  to  the  tune  of  the  fountain  jets, 
with  a  glimpse  through  an  open  door  of  the  sun- 
ny cortile  and  a  shower  of  purple  bougainvillea 
that  poured  down  from  the  second  story  and 
sprayed  its  fallen  petals  over  the  garden  walks. 

"This  is  Spain,"  I  said. 

"M'am?"  The  waiter  had  thrust  the  menu 
under  my  nose  and  thought — heaven  knows  what 
he  thought. 

[186] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

"This  is  Spain,"  I  said  again,  trying  to  catch 
Allan's  eye. 

"Yes,  m'am,"  the  waiter  answered.  "Will 
you  have  some  soup?  The  chicken  soup  is  very 
nice,  now?    Or  perhaps  an  hors-d'oeuvres?" 

"This,"  I  whispered  weakly,  "is  Spain.  .  .  . 
Bring  me  a  large  sirloin  steak,  potatoes  O'Brien 
— that's  a  Spanish  name! — artichokes  and  after- 
wards a  salad." 

Allan  looked  up  as  the  waiter  rushed  away. 
"If  it  is  Spain,"  he  said  bitterly,  "I  can't  afford 
a  Rabelaisian  feast  like  that!  Ham  and  eggs 
cost  two  dollars  and  a  half,  my  dear." 

When  Allan  says  "My  dear,"  his  affection  is 
at  a  low  ebb.  I  choked  over  the  steak  although 
it  was  fearfully  good.  The  waiter  was  an  artful 
creature.  He  knew  the  trick  of  making  you  feel 
that  the  poverty  of  your  order  pained  him  deep- 
ly. He  suggested,  by  his  raised  eyebrows,  that 
he  had^  always  waited  on  financially  unbridled 
people.  He  hovered,  murmuring  that  the  as- 
paragus was  very  good,  that  we  might  like  mush- 
rooms, that  he  could  bring  us,  if  we  only  give 
him  the  word,  food  worth  twenty  dollars.  He 
deplored  our  plebeian  steak  in  his  very  manner 
of  serving  it.  In  the  end,  of  course,  Allan  suc- 
cumbed to  his  blandishments  and,  avoiding  my 

[187] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

eye,  ordered  an  elaborately  indigestible  dessert 
which  neither  of  us  wanted. 

Instantly,  as  if  his  purpose  were  accomplished 
and  he  had  no  further  use  for  us,  the  waiter  be- 
came haughty  and  aloof;  while  we  tackled  the 
expensive  pastry,  he  joined  one  of  his  co-fiends 
and  gossiped  softly.  Nor  did  our  bill  impress 
him;  he  tucked  it  carelessly,  upside  down  to 
spare  my  feelings  and  to  foil  my  curiosity,  under 
Allan's  plate,  and  then  bore  away  a  ten  dollar 
bill  for  mutilation  with  the  indifference  of  a 
bank  clerk. 

But  we  recovered  our  self-respect  as  soon  as 
we  reached  the  sunny  Plaza  again.  We  sat 
there  through  a  drowsy  hour,  watching  the  life 
of  the  little  city  as  it  ebbed  and  flowed  through 
the  square.  The  flecked  shadows  of  the  oaks  and 
cedars  and  splendid  palms  made  fantastic  pat- 
terns on  the  walks  and  on  the  greensward.  Every 
passerby  of  possibly  Spanish  complexion,  and 
they  were  many,  stirred  us  to  lively  discussions. 
Were  they  really  descendants  of  the  first  Spanish 
settlers  or  of  those  romantic  Minorcans  whose 
history  is  so  tragically  woven  into  the  complex 
story  of  St.  Augustine?  You  probably  remem- 
ber, unless  you  "always  skip  the  historical  para- 
graphs" (I  do,  except  when  I  have  to  write 
them!)  that  when  Florida  was  ceded  to  England 

[188] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

in  1763,  the  outraged  Spaniards  fled  St.  Augus- 
tine bag  and  baggage  and  took  their  hurt  feelings 
to  Cuba. 

The  Minorcans  were  brought  over  not  long 
after  the  change  of  rule  by  an  English  planter, 
Nicholas  Turnbull,  who  put  the  simple  and  un- 
suspecting people  to  work  on  his  indigo  farms 
at  New  Smyrna  and  then  virtually  enslaved 
them.  They  were  too  guileless,  or  too  intimi- 
dated, to  know  that  Turnbull  had  no  legal  right 
to  force  them  to  pay  for  their  passage  in  terms 
of  servitude,  and  they  had  endured  this  intoler- 
able martyrdom  nine  years  before  one  of  them, 
learning  somehow  that  there  was  an  English 
governor  at  St  Augustine,  escaped  and  took  the 
story  of  his  people's  humiliation  to  an  English 
court.  And  since  the  liberated  Minorcans 
settled  at  St.  Augustine,  leaving  Nicholas  Turn- 
bull  high  and  dry  on  his  labourless  indigo  farm, 
it  is  probably  Minorcan  and  not  Spanish  blood 
which  darkens  the  eyes  and  cheeks  of  those  olive- 
skinned  and  beautiful  St.  Augustinians  who 
passed  us  in  the  Plaza. 

We  were  caught  into  the  spirit  of  the  siesta 
hour,  too  lazy  to  go  into  the  Catholic  cathedral 
which  faces  the  Plaza  on  its  northern  side.  We 
sat,  instead,  on  the  comfortable  garden  bench 
and  looked  at  the  beautiful  simplicity  of  the 

[189] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

facade,  unbroken  save  by  a  statue  of  a  saint  set 
justly  in  a  niche,  and  by  a  triune  belfry  and  a 
cross.  Children  scampered  by,  knots  of  gos- 
siping and  laughing  negroes  ambled  past  on 
their  own  mysterious  and  leisurely  business, 
flower  sellers  displaying  neat  little  bouquets  of 
gardenias  and  camellias  on  wooden  trays  mean- 
dered up  and  down  making  picturesque  figures 
of  themselves,  and  everywhere  the  home-towners 
rattled  newspapers  and  shifted  with  the  sun  from 
bench  to  bench.  The  old  stone  obelisk  reminded 
us  of  a  certain  little  fountain  in  the  Cascine  gar- 
dens at  Florence ;  if  you  have  been  there  you  will 
remember  the  dedication  to  Narcissus  and  the 
shallow  bowl  of  clear  water  and  the  emerald 
shadows  of  the  ancient  grove  of  oaks. 

The  tin  automobile,  making  hideous  sounds, 
roused  us  from  our  gentle  laziness.  The  driver 
spied  us  from  the  street  and  we  went  back  to  the 
car  reluctantly,  like  victims  going  to  certain  tor- 
ture. The  garage  had  done  its  utmost  for  the 
tin  ruin.  The  tires  were  bandaged  and  plastered 
and  trepanned  and  stuffed  to  the  bursting  point 
with  oxygen.  And  the  driver,  still  copiously  be- 
dewed and  almost  invisible  under  a  coat  of 
grease  and  mud,  assured  us  on  his  oath  that  he 
could  "make  forty  all  the  way  back  to  Jax." 

It  was  sunset  when  we  left  the  town,  for  we 
[190] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

were  beguiled  into  an  "oldest  house"  which 
proved  to  be  the  wrong  one  and  where  we  saw 
nothing  but  a  mildewed  print  of  Osceola,  a  chair 
made  of  elephant's  tusks  and  some  other  mid- 
Victorian  curios  that  had  nothing  to  do  with  St. 
Augustine  or  antiquity.  While  it  cost  us  noth- 
ing to  view  these  exhilarating  horrors,  it  cost  a 
quarter  to  take  leave  of  them! 

When  we  swung  (oh,  yes,  we  were  swinging 
when  we  started)  out  of  the  old  gates,  the  sky 
was  quite  magnificent  and  the  wide  Bay  had 
taken  on  a  deep  and  luminous  blue.  We  hur- 
ried through  a  long  avenue  of  moss-draped  oaks 
where  I  shut  my  eyes  because  I  don't  like  moss, 
particularly  when  it  is  choking  splendid  old 
trees  in  a  death  embrace  and  hiding  the  rich 
green  of  leaves  with  its  drab,  bone-hued  ugli- 
ness.   Twilight  found  us  rattling  swiftly 

Bang! 

We  descended;  we  patched,  we  spoke  hope- 
fully of  its  being  the  last  time.    Then  on. 

Bang! 

The  struggle  all  over  again.    Then  on. 

Bang! 

Terrible  curses  from  the  driver.    All  the  tires 

were  gone  now.    And  it  was  dark.    And  we  were 

ten    miles    from    Jacksonville.      We    stopped. 

The  lights  went  out  and  refused  to  burn  again. 

[191] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

It  was  chilly  and  lonely.  A  white  mist  drifted 
close  to  the  ground,  but  overhead  a  conflagration 
of  stars  burned  remotely.  Frogs  cheeped,  trilled 
and  whistled  liquid,  bubbling  whistles.  Again 
the  driver  knelt  and  probably  perspired.  I 
didn't  care.  I  hoped  that  some  dashing  motor- 
ist would  happen  along  and  offer  to  take  me — 
not  Allan  or  the  driver — back  to  Jacksonville. 
But  no  one  happened  along  except  an  inconceiv- 
ably ragged  negro  who  rose  out  of  the  swamps 
and  squatted  near  us  to  stare  dumbly. 

"It's  no  use,"  the  driver  admitted  in  a  dull 
voice,  rising  from  his  knees  and  clapping  his 
dusty  hands  together.  "We'll  have  to  go  in  on 
the  rims." 

And  we  did.  Ten  miles — on  the  rims — it 
surpasses  description.  At  eleven  o'clock  we 
drove  up  to  the  door  of  the  Seminole  in  what 
was  left  of  the  tin  automobile.  And  there  on 
the  doorstep  was  a  smiling  gentleman  with  mous- 
tachios  and  a  yachting  cap.  He  bowed  and  extri- 
cated us  from  the  wreck  with  tender  murmurs. 

"I  trust,"  he  said,  "that  you  enjoyed  the  trip." 

Can  you,  now  can  you,  beat  that?  If  I  had 
had  the  strength  I  would  have  tweaked  his  nose. 
As  it  was,  I  watched  Allan  count  out  seventeen 
one  dollar  bills  into  the  creature's  hand.  Then, 
I  think,  I  fainted. 

[192] 


CHAPTER  VIII 

,  TAMPA,  SPANIARDS  AND  THE  GREEK  SPONGE 
FLEET  AT  TARPON 


LL  we  saw  of  Tampa,  to  begin  with, 
was  the  enormous  Tampa  Bay  Hotel. 
As  usual,  our  train  was  late — three 
hours  and  a  half  late,  this  time — and 
we  had  stumbled  into  the  first  taxi-cab,  too  dog- 
tired  to  even  glance  at  the  city  on  our  way 
through  it.  When  we  got  to  the  hotel  we  won- 
dered whether  we  should  ever  see  anything  of 
Tampa  beyond  the  endless  halls  and  drawing- 
rooms,  lobbies  and  porches  of  that  prodigious 
hostelry.  A  jaunty  Northern  coon  snapped  his 
fingers  and  rattled  the  keys  of  number  five  hun- 
dred and  ninety-six  and  five  hundred  and  ninety- 
seven,  as  we  panted  at  his  heels  past  miles  of 
doors,  across  acres  of  red  carpet,  down  a  cor- 
ridor that  went  on  like  a  nightmare — 

"Dinner  at  seven,"  he  said.  And  added  with 
a  broad  Boston  accent,  "It's  half-past  eight 
now." 

The  insinuation  was  so  plain  that  we  scarcely 
[193] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

waited  to  brush  off  the  accumulation  of  white 
Florida  dust  which  had  settled  on  our  clothes, 
but  started  out  to  dinner  like  people  with  a 
vision,  pursuing  the  promise  of  food  down  mo- 
notonous miles  and  miles  of  red-carpeted  corri- 
dors. The  dining-room,  when  we  finally  got 
there,  was  like  an  Orientalised  Pantheon,  so 
astounding  in  its  proportions  that  we  entered  it 
with  awe  and  our  tiptoeing  echoed  around  the 
great  dome  like  the  thunder  of  an  army.  We 
hurried  through  our  dinner  because  it  required 
at  least  three  thousand  electric  bulbs  to  light  our 
solitary  repast,  and  the  head  waiter  stood  with 
his  hand  on  the  switch  which  controlled  the  il- 
lumination, depressed,  I  think,  by  the  prodigal 
wasting  of  so  much  brilliance.  Dinner  came 
from  a  far-distant  kitchen  and,  in  spite  of  pre- 
cautionary covers  and  wrappings,  arrived  cold. 
But  the  delicious  oranges  which  we  had  for  des- 
sert were  picked  in  the  hotel  gardens,  and  we 
fancied  that  they  were  still  warm  from  the  after- 
noon sun. 

We  went  to  bed  overwhelmed  by  our  sur- 
roundings. It  was  like  being  in  the  Alhambra, 
if  you  can  imagine  the  Alhambra  comfortably 
furnished  in  the  late-Victorian  manner.  In 
spite    of    "hot    and    cold    running    water    in 

[194] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

every  room,"  you  looked  instinctively  for  a  bell- 
rope. 

It  was  breathlessly  hot — as  unlike  January  as 
January  on  the  Riviera.  We  put  out  the  lights, 
and  with  the  windows  wide  open  leaned  on  the 
sill  and  breathed  deeply  of  the  moist  night  air, 
fragrant  with  the  spice  of  flowering  bushes  and 
trees.  And  for  the  first  time  we  felt  that  we 
were  really  in  the  romantic  South  we  had  been 
pursuing  all  the  way  from  Maryland  through 
snow,  sleet  and  dripping  fog.  Overhead  the 
arch  of  the  sky  was  luminous  with  swarming 
stars,  little  ones  twinkling,  big  ones  very  steady 
and  blue,  a  wide  path  where  the  Milky  Way 
flowed  through  them  all  from  the  top  of  the 
heavens  down  into  the  tangled  darkness  of  the 
garden.  We  could  see  the  closely-packed  foli- 
age of  the  wide-spreading  oaks,  a  spray  of 
ghostly,  feathery  bamboo,  a  tall  palm  with  a 
cluster  of  leaves  atop  like  a  Japanese  baby's 
hair-cut,  and,  shooting  starward,  a  minaret  with 
a  silver  crescent  balanced  sideways  on  its  tip. 

The  morning  was  even  lovelier.  The  dining- 
room  was  less  like  the  Tomb  of  Napoleon  (or 
did  I  say  the  Pantheon?)  when  it  was  full  of 
people,  and  there  was  an  animated  bustle  of 
New  England  waitresses  and  mannered  head- 
waiters.  The  coffee,  brought  at  a  dog-trot  by  a 
[195] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

conscientious  waitress,  survived  the  journey  from 
the  kitchens  and  was  still  steaming  when  we 
poured  it  into  our  cups.  It  is  easy  to  see  why 
the  hotel  management  chooses  its  employes  from 
Puritan  stock! 

We  saw  lots  of  nice,  comfortable  old  ladies, 
"Not  chic,"  I  whispered  to  Allan,  "but  Chi- 
cago." There  were  a  few  old  gentlemen  ad- 
vertising by  their  knickerbockers  that  they  in- 
tended to  play  golf.  There  was  a  dangerously 
lovely  female  and  a  handful  of  exuberant  Span- 
iards chattering  about  the  price  of  tobacco  as 
if  it  were  lyric  poetry.  And  of  course  the  inevi- 
table hotel  "undesirable,"  the  pathetic,  snubbed 
little  man  who  looks  like  a  Portuguese  Jew, 
wears  white  flannels,  turns  his  feet  out,  flashes  a 
diamond  ring,  and  is  eager  in  a  dumb,  doglike 
way,  to  meet  some  one  who  will  talk  to  him, 
and  who  never  does,  and  who  smiles  and  smiles. 
...  It  was  amazingly  like  the  Riviera  before 
the  war.  I  felt  a  reminiscent  thrill  because  the 
women  all  "marcelled"  their  hair  and  wore 
pearls  to  breakfast.  The  world  of  war  and  suf- 
fering was  forgotten.  This  was  the  dining-room 
of  some  Hotel  des  Anglais  or  Grand  Hotel  de 
New  York  as  long  ago  as  the  spring  of  1914, 
when  Americans  still  rushed  to  Europe  for  the 
sort  of  lazy  and  purposeless  enjoyment  they  are 
[196] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

now  seeking  in  Florida.  There  was  perhaps 
not  so  much  turning  of  the  morning  paper  to 
the  Society  and  Dramatic  columns,  but  rather 
an  ostentatious  and  dutiful  scanning  of  the  first 
page.  Yet  I  felt  that  the  poignant  anguish  of 
Europe  was  far  removed  from  the  leisurely  well- 
to-do  Americans  who  were  sunning  their  well- 
nourished,  comfortable  bones  in  the  South.  We 
thought  we  had  detected  a  flaw  in  the  local  col- 
our until  we  discovered  a  roulette  outfit  at  the 
cigar-stand,  where  you  could  play  for  a  "smoke." 
It  was  not  petits  chevaux,  of  course,  but  what 
do  you  expect?  After  breakfast  Allan  played 
forty  cents  and  won  a  nickel  cigar,  and,  puffed 
with  victory,  we  went  out  into  a  trembling,  joy- 
ous day  ablaze  with  sunshine. 

The  hotel  faces  the  Hillsborough  River  and 
the  city  across  a  wide  strip  of  tropical  garden. 
Along  its  prodigious  facade  eight  minaret-like 
towers,  steely  blue  in  colour,  thrust  against  the 
sky  and  glitter  quite  magnificently.  There  are 
all  sorts  of  intriguing  and  delightful  African 
doorways  and  Moorish  windows,  fretted  balco- 
nies and  arched  porches.  A  motion-picture  di- 
rector in  search  of  local  colour  would  find  exotic 
backgrounds  in  the  gardens  of  the  Tampa  Bay 
Hotel  ready-made  and  guaranteed  to  fit.  Al- 
geria, Naples,  Monte  Carlo,  Biskra,  Tunis — 
[197] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

they  are  all  there!  Little  squads  of  tourists 
were  being  piloted  over  the  grounds  and  through 
the  hotel  by  the  jaunty  and  supercilious  bell- 
boys, whose  greatest  climax  was  reached  when 
they  announced  crisply  that  all  the  "trimmings" 
of  the  hotel  were  made  of  steel,  and  to  prove  it 
rapped  sharply  on  the  railings  or  on  one  of  the 
pillars  of  the  porch.  The  tourists  whispered 
among  themselves  and  rapped,  too,  producing 
a  metallic  clatter. 

We  followed  a  path  which  led  to  the  river's 
edge.  The  ground  was  still  wet  with  the  night 
mist,  the  grass  drenched  and  fragrant  in  the 
shadows.  There  were  clusters  of  bamboo  trem- 
bling slightly  in  the  steady,  warm  wind,  and 
lines  of  cabbage  palms  and  patches  of  shiny- 
leaved  bushes — magnolia,  orange,  gardenia  and 
holly,  with  here  and  there  the  fresh,  green  foli- 
age and  beautiful  shade  of  an  old  live  oak. 
There  were  blazing  poinsettias  everywhere,  gor- 
geous purple  bougainvilleas  and  the  orange 
flame  of  the  bignonia  vine.  Camellias  and  aza- 
leas starred  the  garden  walks.  It  was  pleasant 
to  wander  slowly  through  the  checkered  sun- 
light, admiring  the  polished  leaves  of  the  sweep- 
ing palm  branches.  There  were  palms  that 
sprayed  like  fountains  and  palms  that  grew  in 
symmetrical  clusters,  squat  palms  and  very  tall 
[198] 


/A 
V--4 


WE    COULD    CHAT    COMFORTABLY    WITH    THE    CAPTAIN 
WITHOUT  STIRRING  FROM  OUR  GARDEN  BENCH 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

ones,  and  big  patches  of  palmetto  scrub  rustling 
crisply  like  a  lady's  fan.  The  benches  were  al- 
ready filled  with  less  fashionable  tourists  and 
roomers,  the  easily-pleased  home-towners  al- 
ready encountered  in  St.  Augustine,  who  had 
brought  their  morning  papers  or  their  knitting, 
and  had  settled  themselves  comfortably  with 
their  backs  to  the  sun  for  the  whole  morning. 
Tampa  owns  the  Tampa  Bay  Hotel,  and  its  gar- 
dens are  thrown  open  to  the  public. 

At  the  river's  edge  we  found  a  small  sailing- 
boat  anchored  so  close  to  shore  that  we  could 
chat  comfortably  with  her  captain  without  stir- 
ring from  our  garden  bench.  She  was  called 
the  Sir  Francis  and  had  come  all  the  way  down 
from  Seattle,  through  the  Panama  Canal  and 
up  the  Florida  Coast. 

"How  long  did  it  take  you  to  do  it?"  Allan 
wanted  to  know. 

"I  was  eighteen  months  in  the  doin'  of  it,  sir," 
the  Captain  told  us,  "and  I  'ad  as  fine  a  time  as 
ever  a  man  'ad." 

We  judged  he  was  English. 

"Yes,  sir!  Born  in  Tilbury.  That's  a  coun- 
try!" 

He  spat  rhythmically  into  the  water  while  we 
discussed  the  war. 

"England  always  wins,"  the  Captain  said.  He 
[199] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

had  a  short  memory,  or  else  English  history- 
books  don't  make  much  of  1776.  But  when  he 
said  with  great  violence,  "You  watch  'er !  When 
England  gets  through,  there  won't  be  a  'Un  in 
Germany,"  we  cheered  from  our  garden  bench. 

"Come  aboard,"  he  invited  us,  feeling  that  we 
were  sympathetic.  "I've  got  a  tidy  little  ship, 
I  'ave." 

So  we  got  into  the  rickety  tender  and  went  out 
to  the  Sir  Francis  to  pay  a  call.  Her  cabin  was 
not  quite  high  enough  for  us  to  stand  erect  in, 
but  roomy  enough,  the  Captain  assured  us,  "for 
little  fellers"  like  him.  There  was  an  iron  stove, 
a  bunk  which  folded  up  and  became  a  bench 
by  day,  a  table,  and,  of  all  things,  an  electric 
light  to  read  by!  No  New  York  bachelor  keep- 
ing house  in  an  uptown  flat  could  possibly  be 
more  comfortable. 

"I'm  going  on  to  the  Bahamas  to-morrow," 
the  Captain  told  us,  rhyming  Bahamas  with  ba- 
nanas somehow.  "All  alone  I  am,  too.  And 
I've  seen  some  queer  things." 

No  doubt.  He  had  pink-lipped  shells  from 
far-away  beaches,  huge  conches  fluted  and  sing- 
ing, a  pearl-like  fragment  as  multi-hued  as  the 
tropic  sea  where  he  found  it,  dried  sea-porcu- 
pines strung  like  lanterns  from  the  cabin  roof, 
lace-bark  from  South  America,  and  the  funniest 
[200] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

collection  of  stones  and  broken  crockery  I  have 
even  seen.  He  was  a  travelled  man  and  a  ro- 
mantic man.  He  was  doing  what  nine  men  out 
of  ten,  once  in  their  lives  at  least,  long  to  do, 
and  for  me  he  was  tinged  by  all  the  dreams  I 
have  heard  dreamed  aloud.  But  he  was  per- 
fectly unaware  of  being  romantic.  He  peeled 
potatoes  for  his  lunch  and  spat  over  the  rail. 

"Tampa's  a  fine  place,"  he  said.  "Better  go 
ashore  and  look  her  over.  If  I  didn't  'ave  to 
be  getting  on  to  the  Bahamas,  I'd  stay  a  month. 
Glad  you  came  aboard.  Not  at  all,  sir. 
Thanks!" 

So  we  left  him,  and  following  his  advice  went 
to  look  Tampa  over.  I'll  tell  you  what  we 
found,  that  day  and  many  other  days  of  warm 
wind  and  white  sun. 

There  is  an  office  in  Tampa  where  you  are 
bound  to  hear  talk  of  the  sea.  You  can  find  it, 
if  you  search,  in  a  new  office  building  which 
overlooks  both  the  harbour  and  the  city.  Be- 
fore the  war,  sea-going  men  from  all  over  the 
world  used  to  climb  up  there  for  a  smoke  and 
a  chat  whenever  their  ships  called  at  Tampa. 
And  it  was  our  privilege  to  talk  about  Tampa 
with  the  genial  Italian  agent  who  had  played 
host  to  so  many  travellers.  From  his  window 
he  pointed  out  the  little  square  which  was  all 

[201] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

of  Tampa  twenty-five  years  ago,  and  then  swept 
his  hand  toward  the  new  city  with  a  simple 
gesture  which  meant,  "Still  growing!"  Behind 
a  row  of  modern  skyscrapers,  some  of  them  ten 
or  twelve  stories  high,  the  big  factory  chimneys 
of  Ybor  City  and  West  Tampa  belched  black 
smoke-plumes  against  the  immaculate  blue  of 
the  sky. 

Then  the  agent  turned  back  toward  the  har- 
bour and  pointed  out  the  Government  dredges 
at  work  in  the  channel  and  the  site  of  the  pro- 
posed estuary,  where  he  said  there  would  some 
day  be  municipal  docks  large  enough  for  "fifty 
steamers  to  load  and  unload  at  the  same  time." 
He  brought  maps  and  showed  us  how  Tampa 
Bay  cuts  northward  into  Florida  for  thirty  miles, 
splitting  into  two  natural  harbours  at  its  further- 
most tip.  He  pointed  out  Gasparilla  Island, 
where  La  Fitte's  rebel  pirate  held  his  orgies. 
He  dealt  in  facts  and  in  visions,  tracing  with  his 
finger  the  present-day  harbour  and  the  infinitely 
larger,  deeper  port  of  the  future. 

"There  was  no  Tampa  thirty  years  ago,"  he 
told  us.  "When  I  came  here  from  the  Abruzzi, 
Tampa  was  a  little  cluster  of  rude  houses  on  the 
bank  of  the  Hillsborough  River — you  could 
have  put  it  all  in  the  crown  of  your  hat.  H.  B. 
Plant  had  just  built  his  railway  through  to  Port 

[202] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

Tampa — here  it  is  on  the  map,  ten  miles  from 
here,  d'you  see?  Plant  was  the  Flagler  of  the 
Florida  West  Coast,  and  he  dreamed  of  a  great 
seaport  town  on  Tampa  Bay.  Of  the  two  har- 
bours he  chose,  not  this,  but  the  other,  and  for 
a  while  it  looked  as  if  Tampa  were  going  to 
disappear  in  the  new  glory  of  Port  Tampa.  But 
certain  independent  business  men,  who  were 
crowded  out  by  exorbitant  freight  rates  and  the 
soaring  price  of  real  estate,  moved  away  from 
Plant's  city  and  settled  here."  He  shrugged 
his  shoulders.  "Have  you  been  in  Port  Tampa? 
To-day  it  is  deserted  and  forlorn;  grass  grows 
in  the  centre  of  the  streets;  the  houses  are  crum- 
bling away.  Now  look  out  of  the  window  at 
Tampa!  You  see,  the  capitalist's  vision  of  a 
seaport  town  on  Tampa  Bay  has  come  true,  but 
it  is  not  just  where  he  dreamed  it  would  be." 

The  agent  went  with  us  to  the  waterfront, 
and  we  had  the  unique  pleasure  of  walking 
across  the  sandy  stretches  where  "some  day"  the 
municipal  docks  will  entertain  those  fifty  steam- 
ers. It  was  late  in  the  afternoon  and  the  har- 
bour glittered  magnificently,  catching  the  fiery 
reflection  of  the  setting  sun.  A  lonely  interned 
Austrian  lay  just  outside,  her  rusty  sides  blazing. 
Closer  in,  a  steamer  was  loading  phosphate  un- 
der the  towering  phosphate  elevators  of  the  Sea- 

[203] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

board  Air  Line.  Judging  from  modern  stand- 
ards, most  of  the  ships  we  saw  were  small,  and 
the  agent  told  us  that  the  European  war  had 
greatly  reduced  the  activity  of  the  port.  Near 
us,  a  schooner  was  being  loaded  with  lumber; 
a  score  of  negroes  rushed  the  cargo  aboard,  sing- 
ing as  they  worked.  One  of  them  chanted  a 
verse  in  a  thin  falsetto,  and  the  rest  followed 
him,  full  throated  and  joyous.  There  is  a  catch 
in  the  negro  voice,  like  the  Swiss  yodle,  which 
always  squeezes  something  in  my  heart.  It  is 
perhaps  because  they  sing  folk-music,  piercingly 
sweet,  poignantly  sad  and  universal  in  its  beauty. 

The  big  schooner  belonged  to  the  agent.  He 
confided  to  us,  as  we  watched  the  simian  antics 
of  the  negro  workmen,  that  the  ship  had  had  a 
lurid  past. 

"I  found  her  out  in  the  Gulf,"  he  told  us, 
"floating  bottom-side  up.  It  was  the  third  time, 
mind  you,  that  she  had  turned  turtle  and  killed 
her  whole  crew!  I  hauled  her  in,  made  her 
over,  rechristened  her  the  Charles  Wiebe  for 
luck,  killed  all  the  little  hoodoos  and  sent  her  to 
sea  again.     She  carries  lumber  to  Havana." 

"An  incorrigible  murderess,"  I  said,  thinking 
of  Conrad's  story. 

"Oh,  no,"  he  answered,  smiling,  "she  has  re- 
formed!" 

[204] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

You  would  like  Tampa  for  the  I  don't  know 
what  of  the  foreign  in  its  atmosphere,  something 
intangible  and  exuberant  which  the  ten  thou- 
sand Cubans  and  Spaniards  who  live  there  have 
charged  the  air  with,  perhaps!    One  sees  Span- 
iards everywhere,  some  of  them  still  untouched 
by  that  process  of  Americanisation  which  puts 
peg-tops  on  a  Castilian  and  teaches  him  how  to 
say  "Sure!"    We  saw  some  splendid  old  fellows, 
seamed  and  leathery,  wearing  the  broad,  black 
felt  hat  and  the  flopping  trousers  of  the  Spanish 
peasant,  and  swarthy  young  men  who  were  the 
living  embodiment  of  Zuloaga's  canvases.  Their 
quarters— street    after    street    of    whitewashed 
shanties— are  near  the  big  red-brick  factories  of 
the  Cuesta-Rey,  the  Perfecto,  the  Principe  de 
Gales  and  a  half  dozen  other  cigar  manufac- 
tories at  West  Tampa.    Here  and  there  a  patch 
of  garden  has  been  scratched  enough  to  nourish 
a    feeble    poinsettia    or    a    rosebush.      Spanish 
women  smile  from  the  doorsteps  and  Spanish 
babies  rollic  in  the  gutters.     On   Sunday  and 
festa  days,  the  girls  promenade  arm  in  arm,  gig- 
gling and  flirting,  the  men  swagger  and  smile, 
the  old  people  look  on  from  the  cool  shadow 
of  the  doorways— it  is  Spain  transplanted.    And 
everywhere  there  is  a  fragrant  odour  of  tobacco, 

[205] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

as  if  some  one  had  just  opened  a  huge  cigar- 
box! 

In  Tampa  the  sidewalks  are  shaded  by  per- 
manent awnings  and  there  is  the  same  play  of 
light  and  shadow  which  you  find  in  an  arcad- 
ed  town — the  street  flooded  with  sun,  a  smash- 
ing riot  of  colour  and  movement,  the  sidewalks 
cool  and  shadowy.  At  night,  Main  Street  was 
crowded;  the  shops,  with  their  display  windows 
brilliantly  lighted,  were  all  open,  and  for  the 
first  time  since  we  left  New  York  we  saw  pretty 
girls.  They  strolled  up  and  down  the  arcaded 
streets  or  sat  on  high  stools  before  marble  soda- 
water  shrines,  sipping  pink  drinks  through  a 
straw,  and  Allan  was  so  enraptured  that  I  had 
to  steer  him  into  a  Movie  Theatre  to  shift  his 
attention. 

The  "movies"!  The  histrionic  intoxication 
of  the  modern  wayfarer,  a  shadowy  substitute 
for  the  strolling  players,  the  marionettes  and 
circuses  of  Gautier's  day!  We  joined  an  audi- 
ence of  tender  little  children  who  were  watch- 
ing a  Brieuxesque  drama  which  would  have  sent 
shivers  of  horror  down  an  Apache's  spine.  The 
tender  little  boys  and  girls  chewed  gum  and 
stared  solemnly  and — sat  through  it  again!  They 
were  still  there,  chewing  and  staring,  when  we 

[206] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

escaped.     Poor,  funny  little  Tampa-ites!    And 
we  were  denied  Ivanhoe  at  their  age.  .  .   . 

More  than  anything  else,  Tampa  delighted 
us  because  it  was  clean.  I  don't  know  why  I 
profess  myself  so  loudly  a  lover  of  the  spick  and 
span.  I  relish  the  ardent  flavour  of  cheese  and 
sausage  in  the  Borgognissanti  at  Florence  and 
that  inexplicable  odour  which  takes  you  by  the 
nose  and  by  the  soul  over  behind  the  Venetian 
fish-market;  I  like  the  mud  at  Tivoli  and  the 
dripping  walls  at  Assisi,  plastered  with  the  filth 
of  a  thousand  years;  nor  do  I  hold  my  nose  in 
dainty  horror  at  Santa  Lucia.  But  a  puddle  in 
a  modern  American  city  offends  me,  and  an  eddy 
of  dirty  newspapers  in  the  gutter  arouses  all  my 
civic  ire.  It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  since 
Newness  is  the  symbol  of  our  youth,  and  be- 
cause there  has  been  no  time  for  mellow  decay, 
we  ought  to  be  intolerant  of  neglect.  Tampa  did 
not  let  the  post  office  and  the  court  house  carry 
off  all  the  civic  honours,  in  the  slovenly  manner 
of  so  many  American  cities.  Everywhere  there 
were  substantial  houses,  many  of  them  built  in 
the  Spanish  style  which  is  so  perfectly  harmoni- 
ous under  the  Florida  sky.  And  there  were  at- 
tractive clubs,  parks,  boulevards  and  avenues 
of  palms  and  live  oaks.  Even  the  drawbridge 
had  felt  the  need  to  be  beautiful.  It  opened  in 
[207] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

the  middle  like  a  pair  of  scissors  and  kept  its 
machinery  hidden  under  a  frivolous  little  pavil- 
ion! 

Handbills  were  being  distributed  in  the 
streets  announcing  pinkly  that  at  the  Teatro 
Centro  Astruriano,  Esta  noche  Sabado,  Enero 
20,  a  las  8  en  punto,  there  would  be  a  perform- 
ance of  Rigoletto,  Gran  Opera  en  4  ados  del 
celebre  Maestro  G.  Verdi. 

I  went,  hoping  to  hear  something  frightful  so 
that  I  could  be  funny  about  it.  But  the  Mancini 
Company  disappointed  me  by  giving  a  really 
good  performance  of  Rigoletto.  It  was  the  sort 
of  singing  and  the  sort  of  audience  we  have 
long  ceased  to  hope  for  in  New  York.  Between 
the  acts  all  the  young  men  paced  up  and  down 
the  lobby,  making  vociferous  gestures  and  pre- 
tending that  they  knew  everything  about  style 
and  tradition.  Tampa?  America?  We  had  to 
pinch  ourselves  to  drive  out  the  hallucination 
that  somehow  we  had  stumbled  into  Spain. 

Later  in  the  week,  as  a  very  particular  treat 
for  the  American  tourists,  a  Gran  Funcion  Ex- 
traordinaria,  grand  opera  moved  across  the 
Hillsborough  River  to  the  Tampa  Bay  Hotel 
Casino  and  Trovatore  was  sung  to  an  almost 
invisible  audience.  We  stood  near  the  stage 
door  and  heard  the  outraged  impresario  curse 

[208] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

the  whole  tourist  tribe  in  seven  ardent  tongues. 

"They  are  unmusical  dogs,"  he  roared,  "fit 
for  nothing  but  hand-organ  symphonies!" 

We  went  back  to  the  hotel  very  saddened,  and 
found  that  tourists  do  like  music,  after  all!  The 
lobby  resounded  with  ragtime,  and  a  lonely  hall- 
boy  was  flapping  an  ecstatic  one-step,  on  his  way 
somewhere  with  a  pitcher  of  ice  water.  Every 
one  else  had  "gone  to  dance,"  he  told  us.  He  was 
a  Boston  bellboy,  but  he  couldn't  keep  his  feet 
still.  We,  too,  went  to  dance.  A  drum,  a  sob- 
bing saxaphone,  a  whining  ukelele,  a  piano  and 
a  violin  made  music  in  the  ballroom.  Turn, 
turn,  tumity  turn,  click,  click,  clickity  bingl  Zip, 
zip,  zipity  smash!    Bang,  bang,  bimbledy  bang! 

"Oh,  isn't  it  great?" 

They  skipped  and  slid  and  swaggered  and 
minced,  old  ones  and  young  ones.  They  whirled 
and  stepped  and  walked  like  jerky  automatons; 
they  clutched  and  clung  and  spun  on  their  toes. 
Zing,  zing,  zingityzing! 

We  stepped  out  on  the  polished  floor  and  in- 
stantly forgot  all  about  Trovatore.  Zipity  zip! 
What  is  American  music  coming  to,  anyway? 
Has  any  one  ever  stopped  to  think  that  this  sort 
of  thing  is  wilder  than  a  Hungarian  spasm? 
Has  any  one — choo  choo,  chiggity  choo — ever 
stopped  to  think  that  there  never  has  been  a 
[209] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

symphony  all  in  ragtime?  Or  an  American 
rhapsody?    I  wonder — 

"For  heaven's  sake,  stop  wondering,"  Allan 
said,  "and  dance." 

So  we  danced. 

The  hotel  and  its  gardens  were  alluring,  but 
the  time  had  come  when  we  had  to  decide  to 
spend  the  rest  of  our  winter  vacation  in  Tampa 
or  go  on  at  once  towards  New  Orleans.  And 
Tarpon  Springs  was  marked  on  our  itinerary 
in  large  letters  and  "double-starred"  according 
to  Baedeker's  helpful  system.  So  we  devoted 
our  last  day  in  Tampa  to  the  rounding  out  of 
our  schedule.  Tarpon  is  twenty-five  miles  north 
of  Tampa;  we  could  do  little  more  than  check 
it  off  our  list  and  then  boast  forever  afterwards, 
like  the  Yankee  tripper  who  "does"  Venice  in 
an  hour,  that  we  had  been  there.  The  hotel 
advertised  motors  for  hire  and  held  out  the 
promise  of  "chauffeurs  in  uniform."  But  they 
cheated  us — or  else  I  am  under  a  misapprehen- 
sion as  to  what  a  uniform  is.  For  the  driver  of 
the  car  we  hired  for  the  trip  to  Tarpon  was 
wearing  a  plaid  cap  (a  Scotch  plaid  which  had 
undergone  a  sea-change),  a  pea-green  overcoat 
and  yellow  shoes.  A  very  broad  smile  and  a 
lovely  Southern  accent  went  with  the  uniform. 
I    would   have   gone   miles    to    hear    him    say 

[210] 


THE   HOTEL  AND  ITS  GARDENS  WERE  ALLURING 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

"gy-arden"  and  "cyan."  He  warned  us  that 
there  was  a  "powerful  bad  piece  of  road"  to 
negotiate  on  the  way  to  Tarpon;  the  main  road 
was  under  repair  and  a  detour  of  a  mile  and  a 
half  had  been  cut  around  it  through  the  woods. 
He  wasn't  perfectly  sure  that  we  could  get 
through,  but  he  was  "spo't"  enough  to  try.  So 
we  left  early  in  the  morning  when  Tampa  and 
the  alluring  gardens  were  still  wrapped  in  a 
thick  mist. 

For  a  long  time  spatters  of  rain  stung  our 
cheeks.  But  the  driver  assured  us  that  it  would 
clear,  partly  because  he  was  an  optimist  and 
partly  because  he  was  in  deadly  fear  that  we 
would  turn  back.  His  spo'ting  instinct  yearned 
to  tackle  the  detour. 

Promptly  at  ten  o'clock,  as  if  a  mysterious 
stage  manager  had  rung  up  the  curtain  on  the 
pageant  of  Florida,  the  fog  broke  away  before 
the  sun  and  retreated  helter-skelter,  in  platoons 
and  brigades  of  little  clouds,  down  behind  the 
horizon.  We  were  left  under  an  arch  of  trans- 
parent sky,  immaculately  blue  and  clear.  The 
shell  road  was  so  flat  and  flawless  that  we  began 
to  doubt  that  "powerful  bad"  stretch  further  on. 
It  ran  as  straight  as  the  Appian  Way,  narrow- 
ing in  perspective  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach 
through  a  sparse  forest  of  long-leaf  pine.    The 

[211] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

air  was  fragrant  with  the  smoke  of  little  fires 
that  burned  slowly  through  the  underbrush,  and 
a  blue  haze  drifted  close  to  the  ground  like  a 
veil  flung  across  the  vivid  green  of  the  palmetto 
scrub.  We  passed  groups  of  negroes  who  rolled 
their  eyes  at  us  as  we  flashed  by;  occasionally 
a  white  farmer  in  a  one-horse  buggy  trotted  past 
on  his  way  to  town.  But  most  of  the  road  was 
deserted  save  for  a  scurrying  quail  or  a  lonely 
cow  standing  knee-deep  in  the  swampy  ditches, 
or  a  majestic,  wide-winged  buzzard  hanging 
motionless  just  over  our  heads.  Apparently  no 
one  else  was  going  to  Tarpon  Springs.  We  soon 
discovered  why. 

The  road  stopped  and  an  impudent  sign 
labelled  "Detour"  directed  us  into  what  looked 
like  an  impassable  bog.  The  driver  turned  to 
us  with  a  beaming  smile.  "Hold  on,"  he  said, 
with  a  spo'ting  light  in  his  eye,  "for  I  reckon 
you'll  need  to." 

We  plunged  into  a  ditch,  roared  up  a  bank 
on  the  other  side  and  leaped  headlong  into  a 
swamp.  The  car,  taken  by  surprise,  coughed 
and  spluttered  and  careened  like  a  ship  in  mid- 
channel.  We  slithered  and  skidded  in  mud, 
climbed  over  logs,  wriggled  under  fallen  trees. 
The  back  of  the  driver's  neck  got  a  shade  redder, 
but  he  whistled   courageously.     Allan   and   I 

[212] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

clung  on  with  both  hands  and  were  racked  bone 
by  bone  like  heretics  in  a  torture  chamber;  my 
hat  blew  off,  my  hair  came  down  and  there  was 
a  pool  of  hairpins  in  my  lap.  In  the  midst  of 
the  ordeal,  when  the  only  endurable  alternative 
seemed  to  be  unconsciousness,  we  came  out  into 
a  wide  clearing. 

"This  is  Oldsmar,"  the  driver  explained,  and 
added,  with  a  touch  of  awe  in  his  voice,  "the 
Oldsmobile  man's  Oldsmar." 

The  automobile  man  had  bought  a  large  slice 
of  land  between  Tampa  and  Tarpon  Springs  and 
had  planned  an  agricultural  "community." 
Work  in  the  new  town  was  going  on  at  top  speed 
when  we  were  there.  They  were  building  a 
hotel  for  imaginary  tourists,  a  garage  for  vision- 
ary automobiles,  and  stores  for  merchants  who 
may  and  may  not  occupy  them.  Plots  were  be- 
ing staked  off  in  the  cleared  spaces  for  future 
householders,  farms  were  being  apportioned  and 
engines  were  already  puffing  up  and  down  the 
single-track  railway,  busy  and  important,  blow- 
ing big  steam  rings  up  above  the  green  tops  of 
the  tranquil  pines.  We  passed  through  Madison 
Avenue  and  State  Street,  both  more  or  less  ob- 
structed by  bottomless  puddles,  tree  stumps  and 
tenacious  weeds,  and  somewhere  on  one  of  Olds- 
mar's  spacious  boulevards  the  car  became  so 

[213] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

discouraged  that  the  rear  wheel  refused  to  go 
around.  The  driver  made  a  gingerly  decent 
and  lured  us  forward  again  by  plucking  a  hand- 
ful of  palmetto  and  strewing  it  before  the  car 
like  Sir  Walter  spreading  his  cloak  before  Eliza- 
beth. 

How  would  it  feel,  I  wonder,  to  own  a  slice 
of  Florida  and,  like  a  genii  rubbing  a  magic 
lamp,  to  say:  "This  shall  be  a  town.  These  for- 
ests shall  be  fields.  Here  a  house.  There  an 
orchard."  And  when  it  has  all  sprung  into 
existence,  to  stock  the  farms  with  pigs,  horses, 
chickens  and  cows.  Presto!  An  orange  tree 
in  bloom,  a  garden  already  springing  through 
the  rich  earth,  perhaps  a  kettle  on  the  hearth. 
How  would  it  feel,  I  wonder,  to  say:  "Here  is 
your  farm,  you  homeseeker — wherever  you 
are.  For  so  much  and  so  much,  you  may  buy 
this  little  Arcadia,  ready  made  and  guaranteed 
to  fit." 

We  were  glad  that  the  detour  had  led  us 
through  the  miracle.  The  asphalt  pavement  in 
the  heart  of  the  pine  forest  was  poignant  because 
it  was  put  there  for  hypothetical  passers-by  who 
might  never  pass.  Speculating  in  communities! 
For  that,  Mr.  Olds,  you  prove  that  there  is  still 
a  faint  belief  in  men's  heart,  enough  hankering 
for  the  El  Dorado  to  gamble  on. 

[214] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

We  finally  bounced  out  of  the  detour  and  re- 
joined the  road — oh,  the  lovely,  smooth  white 
road!  And  then  it  was  straight-away  to  Tar- 
pon, breezy  and  fast,  with  the  motor  purring  and 
the  highway  unfurling  like  a  ribbon.  The  for- 
est thinned ;  we  came  to  clearings  and  to  orange 
and  grapefruit  groves — globes  of  gold  that  bore 
the  branches  down  to  the  ground.  For  the  first 
time  we  saw  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  scalloping  into 
the  land  with  an  endless  pattern  of  little  bays 
and  inlets,  shallow  water  glittering  under  the 
high  sun  and  lapping  the  sandy  shore  with  myr- 
iad, exact  ripples,  fluted  and  exhaustless.  It 
was  like  a  setting  for  a  Conrad  story,  very  re- 
mote and  tropical,  suggestive  of  the  grim  strug- 
gles of  the  spirit  that  go  on  against  a  background 
of  cloudless  sky,  breathless  heat,  and  lonely, 
palm-fringed  beaches. 

A  golf-links  and  some  very  fashionable  peo- 
ple, tweeded  and  caddied,  warned  us  that  we 
were  drawing  near  Tarpon  Springs.  So  we 
stopped,  while  I  retrieved  some  of  the  hairpins, 
tucked  up  my  bang  and  put  on  my  hat.  The 
friendly  driver  was  so  frankly  interested  in  my 
vanity-box  that  I  stopped  short  with  the  powder 
pufT  in  mid-air  and  ordered  him  to  go  on,  and 
we  roared  into  Tarpon  with  the  puff  in  action, 
to  the  vociferous  astonishment  of  some  pickanin- 

[215] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

nies  on  a  fence  who  had  never  seen  a  lady  "whit- 
ening" herself. 

People  who  go  to  Tarpon  Springs  go  there 
to  fish,  or  to  play  golf,  or  to  sail,  or  to  be  sim- 
ply dreamy,  for  there  is  a  lazy  enchantment 
about  the  place  which  is  very  insidious.  A  few 
of  them,  like  us,  make  the  sponge-fleet  an  ex- 
cuse. We  left  the  pretty  bungalows  and  the 
neat  main  street  of  the  town,  and  went  at  once 
to  Greek  Town  on  the  Anclote  River. 

Sponge  fishermen,  for  some  inexplicable  rea- 
son that  I  am  unable  to  explain,  are  always 
Greeks.  Off  the  coast  of  Tripoli,  in  British 
Honduras,  in  Key  West  and  here  at  Tarpon 
Springs,  Greeks,  and  only  Greeks,  pursue  the 
tenacious  sponge.  Their  calling,  like  the  Mur- 
ano  glass-blowers',  may  be  handed  down  from 
father  to  son,  a  sort  of  hereditary  talent.  At  any 
rate,  the  fleet  at  Tarpon  is  manned  entirely  by 
Greeks,  although  the  "catch"  is  sold  to  Amer- 
ican buyers.  And  Greeks  colour  the  place  as 
distinctively  as  the  Spaniards  tinge  Tampa  with 
their  fiery  Latinism.  The  Greek  language  is 
spoken  everywhere  in  the  streets  and  decorates 
shop-signs,  bill-boards  and  restaurant  bills-of- 
fare. 

The  fleet  leaves  port  for  cruises  which  last 
from  two  to  five  months,  according  to  the  weath- 

[216] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

er  and  the  size  of  the  "catch."  "Over  a  mil- 
lion dollars'  worth  of  business  a  year"  is  the  re- 
markable record  of  the  sponge  industry  at  Tar- 
pon Springs.  It  used  to  be  the  custom  to  grap- 
ple for  the  sponges  with  long  poles,  pronged  at 
the  tip  like  a  pitchfork.  But  to-day  every 
sponge-boat  carries  one  or  two  expert  divers 
who  go  down  in  very  deep  water,  often  to  the 
depth  of  a  hundred  and  twenty  feet,  and  tear 
the  tenacious  growth  away  from  the  rocks.  Each 
schooner  is  accompanied  by  a  smaller  diving- 
boat  which  is  moored  alongside  like  a  baby 
snuggling  against  its  mother.  The  divers  make 
their  descents  from  the  low,  broad  decks  of  the 
smaller  boats,  carrying  a  net  and  the  three- 
pronged  grappler  and  wearing  the  ponderous 
and  grotesque  helmet  and  the  unwieldy  suit  of 
a  deep-sea  diver.  Their  life  is  spent  in  the 
flickering  half-light  of  that  weird  world  at  the 
bottom  of  the  ocean.  They  struggle  against  the 
treacherous  currents  and  implacable  tides;  they 
walk  in  coral  gardens,  through  groves  of  feath- 
ery sea-weed  and  tall  grass  which  waves  rhythm- 
ically to  the  pulse  of  the  sea;  they  know  all  the 
mysteries  of  the  ocean — bulbous  fish,  ogling  and 
wide-lipped  sharks,  the  hideous  octopus,  jelly- 
fish, transparent,  opalescent  and  motionless.  The 
treasure  they  are  in  search  of  clings  to  the  coral 
[217] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

formations,  to  rocks,  to  the  fluted  sand-bottom. 
Some  of  the  sponges  are  as  flat  and  widespread  as 
geranium  leaves,  some  of  them  grow  in  fat  clus- 
ters like  gigantic  golden  grapes,  some  of  them 
are  shaped  like  fungi,  and  as  porous  as  a  honey- 
comb. The  diver,  bracing  himself  against  the 
tugging  currents,  pries  the  growth  loose  with 
his  grappler  and  fills  his  net.  It  is  dangerous 
and  exhausting  work.  We  saw  several  men  along 
the  waterfront  at  Tarpon  who  walked  with  the 
utmost  difficulty,  dragging  their  legs  and  twist- 
ing grotesquely  in  their  efforts  to  put  one  foot 
before  the  other.  They  told  us  that  they  had 
been  attacked  by  "diver's  paralysis."  They  still 
made  descents,  and  they  assured  us  that  they 
could  walk  without  any  difficulty  under  water, 
which  is,  after  all,  their  accustomed  element. 
Free  of  the  enormous  pressure  and  safe  and  dry 
on  land,  they  suffered  like  gasping  fish. 

The  fishermen  were  an  exuberant,  cheerful 
lot,  well-built  and  handsome,  brown  of  skin, 
black-haired,  blue-eyed  and  sturdy.  They 
walked  with  a  swagger,  swaying  from  the  hips. 
Some  of  them  were  barefooted  but  none  of  them 
was  bareheaded — they  crowned  the  classicism  of 
their  Greek  profiles  with  checkered  caps  and 
battered  straw  hats.  One  of  them,  like  a  glori- 
fied Charlie  Chaplin,  had  a  number  two  derby 

[218] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

atop  a  wild  mop  of  black  curls.  Sartorially 
they  ran  to  gaudy  shirts  and  screaming  neckties 
— and  we  blessed  them  just  for  that. 

"Photograph"  is  the  international  esperanto 
for  friendliness.  Wherever  we  pointed  the  cam- 
era a  dozen  Greeks  leaped  to  get  into  the  picture. 
They  posed  for  us  like  self-conscious  effigies,  all 
in  a  row  with  cast-iron  grins,  their  feet  turned 
out  and  a  curl  of  black  hair  pulled  down  across 
their  eyes  like  a  Coster's  forelock 

I  was  glad  that  they  had  given  their  boats 
Greek  names  for  the  most  part.  Although 
"Charm"  and  "Kilkis"  and  "Three  Brothers" 
do  very  well  for  Gloucester  fishermen,  the  Greek 
alphabet,  when  it  spells  XAAKH  decorates  a 
prow  as  delicately  as  a  scroll  of  flowers.  Could 
anything  be  lovelier  than  Ar.  TEOPros? 

The  Greeks  had  their  own  coffee-houses 
and  restaurants  all  along  the  water-front,  and 
there  were  one  or  two  shops  where  you  could 
buy  sponge  fragments,  shells,  alligator's  teeth, 
coral  branches,  frail  sea  anemones,  delicate  star- 
fish, postcards  or  a  bunch  of  green  bananas  and 
a  package  of  Zu-Zus! 

A  young  Greek  hailed  us  from  the  porch  of 
one  of  the  coffee-houses. 

"Hey,  you!"  he  shouted,  with  a  flashing  smile. 
"Take  my  picture  with  this  here  pipe." 
[219] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

This  here — or  should  I  say  that  there? — pipe 
was  a  large  hubble-bubble.  He  had  curled  his 
bare  toes  around  the  bottle,  the  long  tube  was 
in  his  mouth  and  clouds  of  blue  smoke  rocketed 
skyward.  We  took  the  photograph,  even  though 
the  young  Greek  was  sitting  in  a  Stygian  shadow. 
Nothing  appeared  on  the  developed  film  but  a 
bottle  and  ten  toes.  Instead  of  a  peaceful  genre, 
we  had  photographed  what  looked  like  the  fe- 
vered imaginings  of  a  spiritual  seance.  There 
were  the  disembodied  pedal  extremities  of  a 
Greek  grasping  a  crystal  sphere — and  nothing 
else! 

But  the  sunny  wharves  and  the  dazzling  fleet 
held  us  outside.  It  was  like  the  Marina  Grande 
at  Capri,  Palermo  and  Trieste  and  rolled  into 
one.  It  was  gaudy,  it  was  theatrical,  it  was 
amazingly  beautiful!  Wouldn't  you  have  been 
bewildered  if  you  had  come  upon  a  mirage  of 
the  Mediterranean  in  Florida — only  right-side 
up  and  tangible? 

The  Greeks  had  had  their  "Cross  day"  or 
Epiphany  celebration  the  day  before;  the  whole 
fleet  was  in  port  and  all  the  streets  were  deco- 
rated with  flowers,  bunting,  and  the  Greek  and 
American  flags  intertwined.  There  had  been  a 
three-hour  service  at  the  Greek  Church  which 
we  had  missed  and  can  never  forgive  ourselves 

[220] 


THE    GREEKS     HAD  SAID  THEIR  PRAYERS  AND  WERE  AT 
WORK  AGAIN 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

for  missing.  There  had  been  prayer,  songs  and 
incense.  Fifteen  hundred  Greeks  had  crowded 
the  little  church  at  Tarpon  to  stand  during  the 
whole  impressive  service  from  eight  o'clock  un- 
til eleven.  A  great  basin  of  water  had  been 
blessed  and  there  had  been  a  mad  scramble  to  dip 
it  up  in  cups,  pitchers,  jugs  and  bottles,  and  to 
carry  a  drop  or  two  away.  There  had  been  a 
solemn  procession  through  the  streets  to  the  wa- 
ter's edge  at  Spring  Bayou,  where  the  priest, 
standing  under  a  canopy,  had  prayed  and  then, 
with  all  his  strength,  had  flung  a  cross  out  into 
the  water.  Dozens  of  young  Greeks  had  plunged 
in  after  it.  One  of  them,  stronger,  pluckier,  more 
desirous  perhaps  than  the  rest,  had  come  up  with 
the  glittering  cross  in  his  hands.  He  had  held  it 
high  above  his  head  for  the  crowd  on  the  bank  to 
see.  They  had  cheered  him  and  his  heart  had 
been  bursting  with  pride  and  happiness.  ...  It 
was  bad  enough  to  have  missed  it,  but  to  be  told 
about  it  heaped  coals  of  regret  on  my  head. 

Now,  in  the  blazing  white  morning,  the  ships 
lay  side  by  side  in  an  intricate  confusion,  some 
in  the  river,  some  drawn  up  on  the  beach,  others 
lifted  high  and  dry  on  land  and  propped  up  with 
blocks  and  beams.  The  Greeks  had  said  their 
prayers  and  were  at  work  again,  coiling  ropes, 
mending  nets,  painting,  staggering  aboard  their 
[221] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

little  schooners  under  heavy  boxes  of  provisions, 
sorting  sponges.  .  .  .  Greeks,  praise  God,  love 
blue!  Along  the  wharves  that  glittering  morn- 
ing there  were  ships  painted  blue  from  stern  to 
bow,  ships  with  blue  masts,  ships  with  blue  bow- 
sprits. They  had  scarlet  keels  and  decorative 
friezes  painted  on  their  sides  in  orange  and 
black — crude  designs  of  extraordinary  beauty. 
Their  blunt  noses  were  piled  with  sponges, 
fruits,  tawny  sails,  anchors,  coils  of  rope,  div- 
ers' helmets  and  vegetables.  Spar  and  chains, 
bowsprits  and  masts  tangled  everywhere.  It  was 
the  most  dazzling  confusion,  the  most  magnifi- 
cent bedlam! 

We  stayed  until  the  sun  slanted  low  across  the 
river,  rimming  the  myriad  tipping  masts  with  a 
fiery  glitter.  Then  we  turned  reluctantly  away 
to  the  hired  motor  because  the  friendly  driver 
had  warned  us  for  the  tenth  time  that  it  was 
growing  late  and  that  there  was  a  "powerful  bad 
piece  of  road.  .  .  ." 


[222]' 


CHAPTER  IX 

'WAY    DOWN    IN    PENSACOLA,    SEAPLANES, ,  SUB- 
MARINES, AND  LUNCH   WITH  AN  ADMIRAL, 
WITH  A  STORM  AS  AN  ANTI-CLIMAX 


LL  I  knew  about  Pensacola,  before  I 
went  there,  was  gleaned  from  a  mus- 
ical comedy  song: 


'Way  down  in  Pensacola 
We'll  wander  where  the  palms  grow. 
You'll  find  there's  nothing  to  do 
But  fool  those  Florida  ladies! 

Not  poetry,  of  course — but  illuminating  his- 
tory! Nothing  to  do  but  fool  the  ladies!  I  was 
still  in  knee-skirts  when  I  heard  the  song,  but 
I  can  remember  the  chorus  girl  who  sang  it, 
greatly  assisted  by  her  ankles,  against  a  blazing 
stage-setting  of  palms  and  unnaturally  blue  sky. 
From  that  moment,  if  I  thought  of  Pensacola 
at  all,  I  thought  of  it  as  a  tropical  rest-cure 
where  tired  sailors  did  nothing  all  day  long  but 
fool  Florida  ladies.  And  somehow  I  could  not 
shake  off  the  conviction.     When  we  arrived 

[223] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

there  after  a  hot,  dusty  journey  from  Jackson- 
ville, I  expected  to  find  myself  in  a  great  grove 
of  cocoanut  palms.  I  expected  to  see  hammocks 
swinging  lazily  in  a  steady  trade  wind  and  sail- 
ors in  white  duck  snuggling  up  to  dusky  belles. 
I  expected  to  see  Urbanesque  cannibals  sporting 
on  glittering  beaches  and  Winter  Garden  chorus 
girls  fox-trotting  in  the  calcium  moonlight. 

Instead,  I  found  a  busy  little  city  which 
looked,  at  first  glance,  like  any  other  little  city — 
but  no  taxi-cabs.  We  stood  on  the  sidewalk  with 
our  luggage  piled  around  us  and  hailed  noctur- 
nal Ford  riders  with  no  success.  They  bounced 
on  and  ignored  our  frantic  signals,  while  all  the 
other  travellers  who  had  come  to  Pensacola  on 
our  train  shouldered  their  own  baggage  and 
went  away  on  foot.  We  might  have  been  wait- 
ing there  now  if  a  policeman  hadn't  offered  to 
"step  down  to  the  corner"  and  telephone  for  a 
taxi.  I  found  myself  wondering  what  would 
happen  to  me  if,  in  a  moment  of  abstraction,  I 
should  ask  a  New  York  policeman  to  kindly  step 
into  the  nearest  pay-station  and  "call  me  a  black 
and  white."  The  obliging  Pensacolan  officer, 
who  looked  like  an  admiral  in  his  long  coat  and 
acres  of  gold  braid,  hurried  briskly  away  on  his 
charitable  errand  as  if  being  a  knight  to  travel- 
lers in  distress  was  one  of  his  accustomed  duties. 

[224] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

The  taxi-cab,  summoned  by  the  law  and  ar- 
riving in  a  frantic  hurry  on  two  wheels,  took  us 
along  a  neat  boulevard  to  an  overgrown  hotel 
on  Palafox  Street.  It  is  known  as  the  San  Car- 
los and  has  a  slightly  Waldorfian  manner,  going 
in  rather  too  extravagantly  for  marble  pillars, 
palms,  gold  and  gilt,  steam  heat,  page  boys,  tele- 
phone girls,  lounges,  cigar  stands,  express  ele- 
vators, and  sky-scraper  proportions.  It  did  not 
seem  possible  that  there  could  be  a  great  enough 
floating  population  in  Pensacola  to  warrant  the 
magnificence  of  its  hotel.  It  was  built,  we  were 
told,  during  Pensacola's  "boom,"  ten  or  twelve 
years  ago,  when  the  inhabitants  of  the  little 
"deep-water  city"  were  shouting  themselves 
hoarse  about  her  miraculous  growth  and  equally 
miraculous  future.  At  that  time  superlatives 
ceased  to  be  conversational  olives  and  got  to  be 
the  bread  and  butter  of  daily  speech.  A  "rea- 
sonable amount"  of  hotel  wouldn't  do  for  a  city 
that  was  destined  to  be  a  "largest  port,"  a  naval 
station,  a  manufacturing  centre  and  a  fashion- 
able resort  all  rolled  into  one.  So  the  towering 
San  Carlos  rose  above  Pensacola  like  a  lonely 
mountain  peak  in  the  centre  of  a  desert,  a  target 
for  windstorms  and  a  symbol  of  the  future.  For- 
tunately for  Pensacola,  the  "boom"  gradually 
lost  strength,  like  a  petted  kitten  expiring  under 

[225] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

indiscriminate  caresses,  and  the  city  escaped  that 
devastating  "bigness"  which  would  have  trans- 
formed her  from  a  lovable  town  into  a  belching 
monster,  blighted  by  factories,  disfigured  by  sky- 
scrapers and  utterly  spoiled  by  riches. 

We  opened  our  windows  as  soon  as  a  sleepy 
bellboy  had  deposited  our  luggage  and  had 
gleaned  a  quarter  for  his  pains.  Then  we  hung 
on  the  window-sill  and  sniffed  the  moist  night 
air,  and  stared  down  into  the  foreshortened  street 
five  stories  below.  Little  Ford  cars,  like  busy, 
shiny  beetles,  bustled  up  and  down,  squawking 
and  pretending  that  Main — excuse  me,  I  mean 
Palafox  Street — was  Broadway.  Bustle  and 
hurry,  a  sort  of  showy  and  Northern  progressive- 
ness,  had  stamped  itself  on  the  town.  The  shops 
blazed,  a  Movie  Theatre  ejected  a  black  stream 
of  chattering  "fans,"  trolley-cars  clattered  back 
and  forth.  And  yet  the  wind  was  indescribably 
sweet  and  soft,  and  came  straight  from  the  Gulf 
across  the  tasselled  tips  of  the  encroaching  pine 
forest.  We  felt  the  lazy  enchantment  of  the 
Southern  night  and  wondered  at  the  liveliness  of 
the  Pensacolans  in  the  street. 

Long  after  we  had  gone  to  bed  the  noisy  crowd 
kept  us  awake.  A  knot  of  negro  loungers  on  the 
corner  talked  until  three  o'clock.     Their  bub- 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

bling  laughter  and  the  incessant  Ford  squawks 
were  my  lullaby. 

Yet  I  suppose  it  is  only  reasonable  that  the  in- 
habitants of  a  city  which  has  passed  thirteen 
times  from  one  government  to  another  should  be 
restless,  volatile  and  animated.    They  have  never 
been  allowed  to  settle  down  long  enough  to  be- 
come inoculated  by  the   Florida  languor,  and 
now  it  is  too  'ate  to  begin.    One  wouldn't  inherit 
a    languid    temperament    from    ancestors    who 
changed  flags  as  glibly  as  we  change  collars  and 
who  alternately  succumbed  to  French,  Spanish 
and  British  rule,  adopting  a  new  nationality  so 
often  that,  with  the  chameleon  who  was  put  on 
a  piece  of  Scotch  plaid,  they  must  have  "busted" 
more  than  once  with  the  effort  of  taking  on  so 
many  colours.    The  Pensacolans  have  just  begun 
to  breathe  again  after  a  reckless  and  unstable 
history.    No  wonder  that  having  survived  such 
a  past,  they  throw  out  their  chests  and  tell  the 
stranger  that  Pensacola  is  a  miniature  Paradise 
—the    deepest   harbour,    the   best   climate,    the 
purest  water,  the  boldest  men,  the  finest  women, 
and,  mind  you,  the  oldest  citv  in  the  United 

States! 

"How's  that?"  you  say,  pricking  up  your  ears, 
because  you  think  you've  caught  me.  "Doesn't 
St.  Augustine  wear  that  crown?" 

[227] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Not  at  all !  Pensacola  was  discovered  by  Don 
Tristan  de  Luna  four  years  before  St.  Augustine, 
with  malicious  intention,  first  began  to  be  the 
oldest  city  and  to  beguile  the  lives  of  settlers 
and  the  dollars  of  tourists.  You  probably  won- 
der why  Pensacola  has  neglected  to  advertise 
her  distinction,  scattering  pamphlets  broadcast 
to  lure  the  tripper  who  can't  pursue  antiquity  in 
Europe  and  has  begun  to  search  desperately  for 
it  nearer  home. 

There  is  a  reason  for  Pensacola's  reticence,  a 
fly  in  the  ointment,  a  blot  on  the  'scutcheon.  St. 
Augustine,  first  settled  in  1565,  was  permanently 
established  and  its  history  has  been  in  the  mak- 
ing ever  since.  But  de  Luna  abandoned  Pensa- 
cola, its  deep  harbour  and  snow-white  beaches 
two  years  after  his  landing  there,  and  it  was  not 
until  d'Ariola  appeared,  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years  later,  that  a  permanent  colony  was  estab- 
lished. It  remained  Spanish  until  the  ambitious 
overlords  of  New  Orleans,  Iberville  and  Bien- 
ville, caught  sight  of  it,  and  then  for-forty-four 
years  Pensacola  changed  hands  like  a  thieves' 
booty.  The  inhabitants  saluted  the  French  flag 
at  sunset  and  pulled  a  humble  forelock  to  the 
Spanish  flag  at  dawn.  It  was  inconvenient  and 
confusing,  but  no  one  could  complain  of  a  lack 
of  variety  in  life! 

[228] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

Then  the  British,  who  have  a  neat  habit  of 
getting  between  belligerents  and  in  settling  a 
quarrel  obtaining  the  cause  of  it,  captured 
Pensacola  for  their  own  and  made  it  the  capital 
of  British  West  Florida.  It  became  very- 
fashionable  and  the  headquarters  of  a  flourish- 
ing Indian  trade  under  the  direction  of  the 
shrewd  and  intelligent  half-breed,  Alexander 
McGillivray,  who  was  chief  of  the  Creeks. 
As  far  north  as  the  Tennessee  River  and 
as  far  east  as  England  and  Scotland,  the 
threads  of  Pensacola's  commerce  linked  her 
with  the  rest  of  the  world.  Rich  Mr.  Panton, 
a  London  merchant,  built  a  trading  post  and 
a  mansion  in  the  town,  and  for  a  while  the  man- 
ners and  fancies  of  England  were  aped  by  the 
settlers.  The  village,  which  consisted  of  "40 
huts,  thatched  with  palmetto  leaves"  when  the 
British  took  possession,  was  enlarged  and 
squared  off  into  streets  and  boulevards,  forts 
were  built,  and  the  inhabitants  were  beginning 
to  believe  that  the  Union  Jack  was  their  honest- 
to-goodness  symbol  of  authority  when  Galvez, 
the  Governor  of  Spanish  Louisiana,  snatched  the 
town  back  again  for  Spain.  The  Pensacolans 
probably  dug  up  their  Spanish  grammars  and 
forgot  English — at  least  in  public.  It  is  easy  to 
see    why    all    the    streets    were    rechristened. 

[229] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

George  street  became  Palafox,  and  other  Anglo- 
Saxon  names  gave  way  to  Saragossa,  Baylen 
Romana,  Barcelona  and  Tarragona,  putting  a 
Spanish  imprint  on  what  is,  after  all,  a  British 
town. 

Andrew  Jackson  was  the  last  to  dip  his  finger 
into  this  international  mince-pie,  and  falling  into 
the  historical  habit,  he  dipped  it  in,  not  once, 
but  twice.  First  he  drove  out  the  British  who 
were  profiting  by  the  lax  Spanish  rule  to  incite 
the  Indians  against  the  brand-new  United  States 
up  north;  then,  with  divine  Yankee  impartiality 
he  turned  about  and  disciplined  the  Spaniards 
for  doing  the  same  thing.  And  finally,  when 
Florida  was  ceded  to  the  United  States  in  1821, 
Pensacola  became  the  seat  of  the  provisional 
military  government  for  ten  months,  and  wound 
up  her  checkered  career  in  a  blaze  of  rather 
temporary  but  dazzling  glory. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  excitement  and  novelty 
have  become  a  habit?  I  hope  that  Pensacolans 
will  forgive  me,  but  it  seemed  to  me  that  they 
are  fond  of  a  good  time,  and  it  would  be  a  pity 
if  they  were  ashamed  of  the  nicest  thing  about 
them.  They  like  to  dance,  they  like  to  play 
golf,  sail,  swim  and  fish;  they  like  to  flirt  and  to 
go  up  in  aeroplanes.  The  women  are  well- 
dressed,  for  heaven  knows  there  is  an  audience 

[230] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

for  them!  I  was  dazzled,  on  going  down  to 
dinner  at  the  San  Carlos,  to  see  ornamental 
ladies  slippered  in  silver  and  gold,  diaphanous 
with  tulle,  coiffed  with  imagination,  and  bearing 
no  single  earmark  of  the  provincial.  They  were 
brides,  most  of  them,  Army  and  Navy  brides. 
Their  red-cheeked,  clean-cut  young  husbands 
were  either  attached  to  the  submarine  flotilla  or 
stationed  at  Fort  Pickens  or  in  training  at  the 
Naval  Aeronautic  Station. 

Their  presence  explained  why  Hudson  Max- 
im's "Defenseless  America"  has  taken  the  place 
of  Gideon's  Bibles  in  every  room  in  the  San 
Carlos  Hotel!  There  is  no  danger  of  a  pacifist 
going  to  bed  in  Pensacola  with  Christian  ideas 
of  unpreparedness  obstructing  his  intelligence. 
Pensacola  has  a  navy  yard,  a  flying  school  and  a 
fort,  and  there  is  a  purposeful  concentration  on 
the  black  and  whiteness  of  our  national  unpre- 
paredness— the  black  to  stand  for  what  has  not 
been  done  yet,  the  white  to  mean  what  is  being 
done  and  will  be  done,  in  spite  of  a  nation  lulled 
to  pacifism  by  waiting  too  long  to  fight,  in  spite 
of  the  devilish  obtuseness  of  authorities,  in  spite 
of  delays,  discouragements  and  rebuffs.  The 
pacifist  at  the  San  Carlos  who  looks  for  his 
comforting  Bible,  hoping  to  misinterpret  it  be- 
fore he  lays  him  down  to  sleep,  finds  "Defense- 

[231] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

less  America"  bound  in  red,  terrifying,  disturb- 
ing and  prophetic,  to  throw  him  into  night- 
marish slumber.  I  have  never  seen  a  Gideon 
Bible  which  looked  as  if  it  might  have  been 
read,  but  the  Hudson  Maxim  high  explosive  in 
my  room  was  thumbed  threadbare.  (If  you 
can  mix  metaphors  like  that!)  I  think  the 
revelation  shook  my  faith  in  spirituality  a  trifle, 
but  it  cheered  me  to  think  that  perhaps  a  few 
sparks  of  high  purpose  had  been  struck  in  the 
turning  of  those  pages.  At  any  rate,  the  book 
was  the  first  indication  we  had  that  the  peace- 
dove  is  unpopular  at  Pensacola.  The  bird 
which  draws  all  eyes,  down  there,  is  a  man- 
made  monster,  lighter  than  a  breath,  wide- 
winged.  .  .  . 

But  before  we  glance  up  into  the  unnatural 
blue  of  the  Florida  sky  (I  say  that  instinctively, 
for  the  sky  was  not  blue  at  all,  but  glaring  white 
like  the  inside  of  a  crystal  goblet!) — before  we 
glance  up,  I  say,  at  the  war-birds,  let  us  focus 
on  Pensacola  herself. 

With  Julian  Street,  Theophile  Gautier, 
Arthur  Symons  and  other  delightful  celebrities 
who  set  the  fashion  in  similes,  I  always  think  of 
cities  as  ladies — languorous  ladies  or  bold  ones 
or  merely  stupid  wenches  with  no  beauty  and  no 
brains.  Pensacola  is  the  most  dangerous  sort  of 

[232] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

flirt.  She  basks  in  the  warm  sun  and  gentle 
wind  for  months  at  a  time;  fogs  drift  in  from 
the  Gulf  and  veil  her  bewitchingly ;  she  is  tender 
and  sleepy  by  starlight,  frivolous  in  the  morning 
— but  always  she  is  lovable.  Nearly  always! 
She  will  turn  like  a  fury  and  smash  and  destroy 
and  annihilate  when  it  pleases  her.  Then  vio- 
lent winds  sweep  across  the  city,  lifting  off  roofs, 
snapping  trees  in  two  and,  as  one  Pensacolan 
said  to  me,  "scaring  the  tar  out  of  everybody!" 
A  city  whose  parlour  tricks  are  so  maliciously 
unexpected  is  tinged,  for  me,  at  least,  with  some- 
thing sinister  and  untrustworthy.  When  she  is 
doing  her  best  to  bewitch  me,  I  keep  my  eye  on 
the  rosy-hued  cumuli  banking  low  on  the 
horizon  and  building  towers  and  pinnacles  that 
may  rise  and  obscure  the  smiling  sun.  When 
the  palm-fronds  hang  limp  and  still  in  the 
breathless  quiet  of  the  hot  afternoons,  I  think 
of  them  torn  by  the  wind  into  writhing  pin- 
wheels,  lashed,  tortured  and  drenched.  Some- 
where in  my  subconscious  mind,  I  am  suspicious 
and  watchful. 

So  the  Pensacolans  must  be,  for  they  have 
built  their  houses  as  close  to  the  ground  as  pos- 
sible. The  frail  wooden  shacks  along  the  water- 
front look  as  if  they  could  be  flipped  away  by 
the  wind  as  easily  as  a  pedestrian's  straw  hat; 

[233] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

some  of  them,  buffeted  by  the  terrific  storms  of 
July  and  September,  1916,  lean  drunkenly,  and 
there  are  picket  fences  everywhere  which  have 
fallen  flat  on  their  faces  and  look  as  if  they 
meant  to  stay  there,  like  refractory  children. 
Living  in  the  shadow  of  such  an  inexorable  fate 
— for  even  optimism  and  the  enthusiasm  of 
capitalists  have  failed  to  stop  the  Gulf  storms 
— makes  the  people  livelier  than  ever.  Like 
Neapolitans,  they  enjoy  living  to-day  because 
it  is  not  altogether  improbable  that  they  will  be 
blown  to  smithereens  to-morrow.  The  surest 
way  to  enjoy  life  is  to  go  where  nature  values  it 
lightly.  I  have  never  appreciated  the  gift  of 
mere  existence  more  poignantly  than  I  did  when 
an  earthquake  nearly  deprived  me  of  it.  In 
that  violent  moment  I  would  have  snatched  the 
dull  routine  of  endless  days  out  of  the  jaws  of 
hell  to  treasure  forever!  In  Pensacola  they 
have  learned  that  lesson.  They  trust  to  luck, 
live  close  to  the  ground,  and  smile.  „  .  . 

At  night  Palafox  Street  is  crowded,  riff-raff 
and  gentry  mixing  and  apparently  liking  it.  A 
steady  tide  of  pedestrians  drifts  up  and  down  the 
narrow  sidewalks  or  answers  the  lure  (at  ten 
cents  a  lure)  of  the  Movie  Theatres,  or  goes 
to  the  "Zoo"  to  stare  at  an  exhibition  of  moth- 
eaten  snakes  and  odoriferous  trained  bears,  or 

[234] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

takes  a  shot  at  a  disappearing  target  in  one  of 
the  clattering  shooting  galleries  on  the  chance 
of  being  sober  and  steady  enough  to  win  a  nickel 
cigar.     Hawkers   yell   hoarse   invitations;   you 
catch  the  alluring  tinkle  of  a  distant  piano  play- 
ing syncopated  melodies  for  dancing  sailors;  the 
busy  little  Fords  rush  up  and  down  always  pre- 
tending that  it  is  Broadway.    If  you  are  a  coun- 
try cousin  you  stare  into  Kress's  windows  and 
admire  tinware,  ribbon,  five-cent  lace  and  ten- 
cent    calico,    pressed    glass,    lemon    squeezers, 
chromos  and  clocks.     The  crowd  is  colourful 
and  picturesque.     There  are  husky  young  sail- 
ors   walking    in    bashful    pairs    like    Italian 
carabinieri;  there  are  longshoremen,  big-handed 
Swedes,  taciturn  Englishmen,  voluble  Italians, 
niggers  and  more  niggers— tall  ones  with  little 
bullet  heads  and  flat  noses,  lanky  ones  laughing 
liquid  contagious  laughter,  yellow  ones  and  sooty 
ones,  jaunty,   cheap   coons  and   ragged   coons; 
negresses  with  feathers  in  their  hats  and  white 
kid  shoes;  likable  fat  negresses  in  inconceivable 
tatters;  untidy,  down-at-the-heel  people  and  trim 
officers   in   khaki,   marines,    Cubans,   Japanese, 
pretty  girls,  tourists,  the  tag-ends  of  humanity 
and  the  show-room  pieces,  drunks,  riff-raff  and 
jetsam. 

In  the  Movie  Theatres  there  are  close-packed 

[235] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

perspiring  audiences  and  sobbing  organ  music 
— "I  Hear  You  Calling  Me"  on  the  vox 
humana!  Babies,  who  should  have  been  in  bed 
for  hours,  squawk  and  squall  and  bubble;  sailors 
giggle  and  middle-aged  citizens  watch  gravely, 
reading  the  captions  aloud. 

But  beyond  Palafox  Street,  the  rest  of  the  city 
is  dark  and  quiet.  You  can  walk  for  blocks  and 
hear  nothing  but  the  ghostly  rattle  of  the  palms, 
see  nothing  but  sober,  sedate  houses  and  discreet 
clubs.  Architecturally,  Pensacola  is  not  exciting 
except  for  a  little  Spanish  baroque  church  which 
may  be  new  but  which  looks  as  old  as  the  world. 
Most  of  the  houses  and  all  of  the  business  build- 
ings were  apparently  planned  according  to  the 
deadly  American  system  of  usefulness  before 
beauty,  without  regard  for  the  landscape,  the 
colour  of  the  sky  or  the  permanence  of  anything. 
Sometimes  I  wonder  why  we  do  not  regulate 
civic  architecture  by  law.  To  encounter  rows 
and  rows  of  ugly  houses  built  in  the  jig-saw  man- 
ner and  painted  a  dingy  grey  or  a  sulphurish  and 
sickening  yellow,  is  cramping  to  the  soul.  But 
to  encounter  them  in  Western  Florida  is  both 
humiliating  and  tragic. 

All  roads  led  to  the  Navy  Yard,  so  we  motored 
out  there  one  morning,  Allan  warning  the  hotel 
garage  that  he  didn't  want  a  Ford,  wouldn't  have 

[236] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

a  Ford,  the  garage  bridling  and  sending  us  a 
fashionable  relic  that  rode  high  on  buoyant 
springs.  We  sat  in  the  lofty  and  slippery  ton- 
neau  and  rattled  loosely  like  beans  in  a  pod. 
Any  slight  variation  in  the  surface  of  the  road, 
like  a  blade  of  grass  or  a  pebble,  bounced  us 
skyward.  Fortunately,  the  road  was  macadam- 
ised except  for  one  stretch,  just  across  the  long 
wooden  bridge  over  the  Bayou  Grande,  where 
some  niggers,  three  mules  and  a  ponderous 
steam-roller  had  created  a  No-Man's  Land  with 
the  mistaken  intention  of  repairing  the  road. 
We  were  constantly  in  mid-air  while  we  nego- 
tiated the  craters,  so  I  have  a  blurred  impression 
of  the  cross-country  approach  to  the  Yard.  And 
I  found  out  later  that  we  could  have  gone  quite 
comfortably  and  cheaply  by  tram  from  the 
centre  of  the  city. 

We  went  first  to  the  old  Civil  War  ruin, 
Barancas,  and  left  the  car  to  climb  up  into  the 
fort  and  from  its  high  walls  to  fix  the  plan  of  the 
Bay  in  our  mind's  retina.  We  crossed  a  wooden 
portcullis  that  bridged  a  shallow  moat  and 
entered  the  fort  through  a  steep  underground 
passageway,  coming  out  by  the  spiny  tower  of 
the  Government  wireless  station.  A  lonely  boy 
in  khaki  was  on  guard-duty  there,  looking  as  if 
he  would  have  welcomed  a  stiff  hand-to-hand 
[237] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

fight  with  almost  any  variety  of  enemy — but  a 
ferocious  one  preferred.  I  suppose  soldiers  do 
grow  tired,  now  and  then,  of  what  is  for  the 
most  part  a  hypothetical  profession.  We  tried 
to  cheer  this  one  by  talking  in  a  hopeful  way  of 
the  lively  possibility  of  war  with  Germany.  He 
brightened,  but  he  let  us  see  very  plainly  that 
he  had  heard  the  cry  of  "Wolf!"  too  many  times 
to  take  our  feeble  pipings  seriously. 

We  leaned  on  the  wall  by  his  side  and  stared 
out  at  the  Bay.  It  enters  obligingly  through  a 
narrow  mouth  so  that  modern  Fort  Pickens,  on 
the  tip  of  Santa  Rosa  Island,  dominates  it  easily. 
Then  it  widens  back  ten  miles  to  Pensacola,  and 
still  further  on  splits  like  a  scorpion's  tail  into 
two  smaller  bays,  Escambia  and  St.  Mary  de 
Galvez.  Santa  Rosa  Island,  a  narrow  sand-strip 
forty-four  miles  long,  locks  the  harbour  away 
from  the  Gulf.  Fort  Pickens,  the  mortar  bat- 
tery and  quarantine  are  all  out  there,  and  curi- 
ous tourists  have  to  be  ferried  across  from  the 
mainland.  I  am  a  layman  and  know  nothing 
of  these  things,  but  it  seemed  to  me  a  very 
inconvenient  arrangement  of  fort  and  barracks 
— the  fort  on  an  island,  the  barracks  on  the 
mainland  and  a  wide  strip  of  harbour  between 
exposed  to  the  fire  of  enemy  ships  lying  just 
across  that  narrow  bar  of  sand.     I  had  an  un- 

[238] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

easy  feeling  that  if  Pickens  were  surprised  at 
night,  or  when  the  defenders  were  having  aft- 
ernoon tea  ashore,  getting  to  the  fort  would  be 
a  blighting  business.  Apparently,  all  of  those 
things  had  been  thought  out  long  before  I  got 
to  Pensacola,  for  when  I  put  my  fear  into  words 
the  fresh-cheeked  boy  in  khaki  became  hys- 
terical. 

To  change  the  subject,  I  asked  him  why 
Pensacola  is  called  the  "Deep  Water  City."  He 
controlled  his  expression  long  enough  to  answer, 
"Because  the  harbour  channel  is  thirty  feet  deep 
on  zero  tide,"  and  then  leaned  against  one  cor- 
ner of  the  wireless  tower  and  laughed  until  he 
cried. 

The  brick  walls  of  Barancas  rise  steeply  from 
the  grey  ruins  of  the  old  Media  de  Luna,  the 
half-moon  fort  built  by  d'Ariola  in  1696.  While 
Allan  sketched  the  curious,  shallow  defences 
and  the  incomparably  white  beach  which  curves 
beyond  them,  I  watched  some  small  boys  play- 
ing at  mediaeval  warfare,  two  of  them  barri- 
caded in  the  fort,  the  rest  swarming  with  blood- 
thirsty howls  (if  three  very  small  boys  can  be 
said  to  swarm)  over  the  crescent-shaped  walls. 

When  the  sketch  was  finished  we  said  good- 
bye, I  rather  stiffly,  to  the  very  young  soldier, 
and  went  back  to  the  car.     As  we  bounced  on 

[239] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

we  saw  a  great  white  bird — not  the  dove  of 
peace — suddenly  thrust  its  nose  skyward  and 
with  widespread  wings  wheel  and  dip  over  the 
glittering  harbour. 

The  Yard  and  the  aeronautic  station  are  half- 
way between  the  entrance  to  the  Bay  and  Pensa- 
cola,  facing  Santa  Rosa  Island  across  the  wide 
strip  of  water.  A  sentry  deprived  us  of  our 
camera  at  the  gate,  but  didn't  insist  on  our  being 
blindfolded,  which  seemed  rather  inconsistent 
considering  the  accuracy  of  optic  photography. 
A  real  spy  doesn't  fix  a  tripod  on  the  periscope 
of  a  submarine  and  prance  about  taking  photo- 
graphs in  full  view  of  officers  and  crew.  Nor 
does  he  spread  his  maps  and  foul  plans  on  the 
parade-ground  of  a  Navy  Yard  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  nursemaids  and  babies  in  perambulators. 
Our  idea  of  a  spy  is  one  who  surrenders  his 
camera  at  the  gate,  swaps  a  yarn  with  the  sentry, 
and  then  saunters  leisurely  about  puffing  a  ciga- 
rette and  endearing  himself  to  every  one  from 
the  Commandant  to  the  Admiral's  pet  dog — 
such  an  artless,  winning  creature  that  no  one 
can  resist  telling  him  everything  he  wants  to 
know,  leading  him  everywhere  he  wants  to  go. 
And  all  the  while  he  looks  and  looks  and  sees 
and  sees.  .  .  . 

The  r.Tavy  Yard  at  Pensacola  encloses  both 

[240] 


A    GREAT  FLOATING  HANGAR,   TRULY  MAGNIFICENT  IN 
PROPORTION 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

the  naval  and  aeronautic  stations.  When  we 
were  there,  all  traces  of  the  destructive  July  and 
September  storms  had  been  wiped  out.  Except 
for  the  wharves,  which  had  not  been  rebuilt, 
things  were  in  spick-and-span  condition.  The 
hangars  and  machine  shops  are  near  the  water 
and  connected  with  it  by  wide  concrete 
"beaches,"  so  that  the  machines  can  be  wheeled 
out  of  the  sheds  and  floated,  if  I  may  put  it  that 
way,  at  their  own  front  door.  The  offices  and 
quarters  are  further  back — all  square,  white, 
unbeautiful  buildings.  And  there  are  the  usual 
patches  of  discouraged  grass  and  shiny  mounds 
of  cannon  balls.  In  the  harbour  out  be- 
yond, the  Columbia,  the  Tallahassee  and  the 
McDonough  were  "mothering"  little  strings 
of  almost  invisible  submarines.  From  the  top 
of  what  looked  like  a  battleship's  skeleton  mast 
a  signal  flag  announced  "Flying  to-day."  And 
the  air  was  full  of  the  mysterious  and  unfamiliar 
hum  of  giant  wings.  We  felt  that  we  were  in 
the  midst  of  a  very  important  and  vital  activity, 
for  the  men  who  are  developing  naval  aero- 
nautics at  Pensacola  are  carrying  on  experiments 
which  make  them  the  focus  of  national  atten- 
tion. 

As  soon  as  I  passed  the  Yard  gate  I  began  to 
ask  questions,  remembering  what  I  had  been 

[241] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

told  before  I  left  New  York:  "Find  out  what 
they  are  doing  down  in  Pensacola.  Find  out 
how  they  are  doing  it.  We  may  be  going  to 
have  a  war,  you  know."  I  had  not  forgotten.  I 
faced  the  Commandant  in  his  office  and,  pretend- 
ing that  I  was  a  composite  American,  rather  put 
it  up  to  him. 

"Well,"  I  said,  fixing  him  with  my  composite 
gaze,  "what  are  you  doing  down  here?" 

Instead  of  taking  me  by  the  scruff  of  my  neck 
and  putting  my  composite  person  outside  the 
door,  the  Commandant  answered  very  seriously 
with  another  question,  "Do  you  really  want  to 
know?" 

"I  do." 

"How  much  do  you  know  already?" 

"Nothing."  Which  wasn't  exactly  composite, 
but  was  at  least  honest. 

The  Commandant  smiled  and  commissioned 
a  patient  aviator  to  show  us  over  the  Yard  and 
to  explain  everything  lucidly  and  repeatedly. 
The  aviator  told  us,  among  other  things,  that 
the  school  at  Pensacola  is  the  only  one  in  the 
United  States  for  the  training  of  officers  and  men 
in  the  naval  aeronautic  service.  This  was  in 
February,  191 7,  and  the  school  was  working 
to  the  limit  of  its  capacity,  with  full  classes  not 
only  of  naval  and  marine  officers  and  men,  but 

[242] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

naval  militia  and  coast-guard  officers  and  men 
who  are  received  every  three  months.  Thirteen 
lieutenants  (junior  grade),  one  lieutenant,  two 
marine  corps  captains  and  an  ensign — seventeen 
men  in  all — were  in  training.  There  were  only- 
five  senior  flight  instructors.  Considering  that 
other  first-class  powers  have  from  two  thousand 
to  ten  thousand  aviators,  and  that  there  were 
less  than  two  hundred  trained  aviators  in  the 
United  States  Army  and  Navy  at  that  time,  it  is 
easy  to  see  that  such  slow  training  of  personnel 
and  instructors  has  held  back  progress  in  the 
building  of  the  national  aeronautic  service.  The 
need  is  not  so  much  to  get  more  aircraft,  but  to 
equip  men  to  handle  them.  And  for  every 
anxious  question  of  mine,  the  patient  aviator  had 
one  answer,  "Universal  training!  When  we 
have  universal  training,  the  problem  of  men  and 
instructors  will  be  solved.  In  the  meantime,  the 
aeronautic  station  at  Pensacola  is  going  ahead 
as  fast  as  it  can.  As  fast,  remember,  as  it  can!" 
In  working  with  the  fleet,  naval  aircraft  have 
four  distinct,  invaluable  duties — to  scout  from 
ships  at  sea,  to  scout  off  shore  from  coastal  sta- 
tions, to  "spot"  and  to  engage  in  offensive  opera- 
tions against  enemy  'planes  or  against  enemy 
ships  and  stations.  There,  and  on  the  first  line 
of  defence,  they  are  of  inestimable  value.    Eng- 

[243] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

land  had  not  been  slow  to  realise,  to  quote  Mr. 
Balfour,  that  "the  time  is  here  when  command 
of  the  sea  will  be  of  no  value  to  Great  Britain 
without  corresponding  command  of  the  air." 
And  Lord  Charles  Beresford  made  an  even 
stronger  statement  when  he  said  that  "the  time 
is  here  when  the  air-service  of  Great  Britain 
will  be  more  vital  for  her  safety  than  her  Army 
and  her  Navy  combined."  General  Petain  has 
said,  "I  see  France  in  the  near  future  with  fifty 
thousand  aeroplanes."  And  Rear-Admiral 
Peary  states  that  "if  we  are  to  have  a  real  de- 
fence we  must  begin  developing  our  aerial 
strength  now  and  push  it  unsparingly.  We  shall 
not  have  started  on  a  proper  pace  of  develop- 
ment of  this  vital  arm  until  we  are  spending  not 
less  than  fifty  million  dollars  a  year." 

As  I  trotted  at  the  heels  of  the  communicative 
aviator  at  Pensacola,  he  explained  to  me  bitterly 
and  explicitly  why  America  is  so  overwhelm- 
ingly outclassed  by  Europe  in  the  matters  of 
naval  aeronautics.  He  told  me,  among  other 
things,  that  there  was  not  a  single  anti-aircraft 
unit  in  the  United  States.  Up  to  that  time  there 
had  been  no  practice  in  the  handling  of  aero- 
plane guns  at  Pensacola,  nor  had  a  single  gun 
been  mounted  on  an  aeroplane.  There  had  been 
no  practice  in  locating  submarines,   torpedoes 

[244] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

and  mines.  Again  lack  of  men  and  material! 
There  was  only  one  kite  balloon,  the  "aerial 
eye"  of  the  forts  and  field  artillery  batteries,  in 
the  United  States,  nor  were  there  any  small 
dirigible  balloons  for  coast  patrol  and  submarine 
hunting. 

"And  do  you  remember,"  the  aviator  said, 
"that  it  was  a  Zeppelin  which  secured  co-opera- 
tion for  the  German  fleet  at  the  battle  of  Jutland, 
and  that  the  British  fleet  was  warned  of  the  ap- 
proach of  the  Germans  by  an  aeroplane  piloted 
by  Flight  Lieutenant  Rutland  from  the  aero- 
plane mother  ship  Engadine?  Did  you  know 
that  only  two  of  our  ships,  the  Seattle  and  the 
North  Carolina,  are  equipped  with  seaplanes 
and  the  catapult  launching  device  which  per- 
mits scouting  away  from  the  shore  station?" 

I  did  not  know.  And  it  had  to  be  explained 
to  me  that  the  "catapult"  is  a  pneumatic  ram 
which  gives  the  seaplane  the  necessary  velocity 
to  leave  the  stern  of  the  ship  and  to  take  the 
air.  But  it  was  hard  for  me  to  believe  that  the 
development  of  the  seaplane  in  America  has 
been  anything  but  miraculous,  when  I  saw  the 
machines  in  the  hangars  and  in  the  sky  at  Pensa- 
cola.  It  was  hard  to  be  pessimistic,  even  though 
the  war-cloud  was  hanging  low  over  the  coun- 
try, in  the  presence  of  so  much  activity  and  genu- 

[245] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

ine  enthusiasm.  We  went  into  the  hangars, 
where  there  were  twenty-five  little  Curtiss  school 
machines  with  flirty  tails,  two  Thomas  aero- 
planes that  looked  like  blunt-nosed  dragon-flies, 
a  Martin,  five  big  Sturtevants,  a  "scouting"  Cur- 
tiss, a  three  hundred  horse-power  Gallaudet  with 
the  drivers'  seats  far  forward  so  that  the  pilots 
ride  like  seasprites  on  a  dolphin's  nose,  four  Bur- 
gesses and  a  Navy  type,  designed  by  Naval  Con- 
structor H.  C.  Richardson.  Another  Navy 
type,  a  school  machine,  designed  by  Lieutenant 
E.  O.  McDonnell,  was  in  the  process  of  con- 
struction. 

I  was  allowed  to  go  close  to  the  beautiful 
monsters  while  they  were  being  "curried"  by 
mechanics,  and  even  to  put  my  hand  on  their 
polished  sides  and  to  touch  the  tips  of  their  out- 
spread wings.  Each  one  had  its  "record."  This 
one  had  always  been  a  "Jonah,"  that  one  had 
made  an  altitude  record;  this  one,  with  Lieu- 
tenant Mcllvaine,  had  been  lost  in  the  fog  the 
day  before  and  for  nine  hours  had  drifted  like 
a  lame  duck  on  Pensacola  Bay.  Some  of  them 
had  settled  on  their  tails  like  those  fragile  flies 
whose  front  legs  are  out  of  all  proportion  to 
their  hind  legs.  They  reared  their  noses  heaven- 
ward. The  motors  were  silent,  and  the  devoted 
mechanics,    aeronautic    grooms,    polished    and 

[246] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

rubbed  and  did  mysterious,  deeply  •intelligent 
things  with  the  complex,  delicate  veins  and 
arteries  that  move  the  inert  body  with  pulsating 
life  and  lift  it  out  of  the  water  to  the  topmost 
skies. 

The  aviator  told  me  that  a  student's  first  flight 
without  the  instructor  proves  his  sense  of  bal- 
ance and  determines  whether  or  not  he  will  be 
a  successful  pilot.  He  may  do  very  well  as  long 
as  he  is  not  alone,  but  the  "feel"  of  a  machine  is 
different  when  it  carries  only  one  passenger,  and 
the  result  is  confusing;  so  confusing,  in  fact, 
that  the  hopeful  student,  even  if  he  escapes  in- 
tact, is  not  always  granted  his  pilot's  degree  and 
has  to  choose  a  more  stationary  branch  of  the 
service.  It  is  not  a  question  of  intelligence  or  of 
personal  courage,  but  depends  rather  on  how 
good  an  equilibrist  one  happens  to  be. 

"It  is  a  magnificent  sensation,"  the  aviator 
told  me,  "to  feel  yourself  actually  flying,  to  see 
the  earth  and  sea  dropping  away  from  under 
you,  diminishing  dizzily  like  sea  and  earth  seen 
through  the  wrong  end  of  a  telescope.  The 
world  looks  as  flat  and  featureless  as  a  pricked 
bubble — it  just  collapses.  And  there  you  are, 
absolutely  not  afraid,  suspended  in  the  air  like 
a  lazy  buzzard  coasting  on  the  wind.  More 
than  anything  else,  it  is  freedom.    You  are  alone 

[247] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

with  the  sky  and  the  machine,  and  somehow  the 
petty  things  of  the  world  get  left  behind.  I  tell 
you,"  he  assured  me,  fixing  me  with  his  eyes, 
"it's  great!    It  gets  into  your  blood." 

It  was  a  breathlessly  calm  day  and  there  was 
an  animated  bustle  along  the  broad  glaring- 
white  concrete  water-front  before  the  hangars. 
With  the  aviator,  who  had  witnessed  the 
spectacle  more  times  than  he  could  remember, 
we  stood  in  the  hot  sun  for  over  an  hour  to  watch 
a  long  line  of  machines,  suddenly  shaken  by 
astounding  explosions,  leap  away  from  shore, 
skim  the  surface  of  the  water  for  a  few  hundred 
yards  and  then  rise  steadily  higher  and  higher 
into  the  sky.  No  matter  how  often  the  miracle 
was  repeated,  I  was  as  excited  as  a  child  with  a 
toy  balloon.  I  had  an  uncontrollable  desire  to 
cheer,  to  clap,  to  flutter  a  handkerchief. 

But  a  memory  restrained  me.  Once  in  Lon- 
don I  had  been  the  only  human  being  in  an  im- 
mense crowd  to  cheer  King  George.  I  was 
standing  on  the  edge  of  the  curb,  firmly  wedged 
from  behind  by  a  British  mob  and  still  more 
firmly  wedged  from  before  by  a  stolid  and 
immovable  line  of  British  police.  I  had 
never  seen  a  king.  Once  in  Rome  I  had 
glimpsed  the  shiny  berretta  of  Vittorio  Em- 
manuele,   who  was   apparently  sitting  on   the 

[248] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

floor    of    his    carriage    as    he    drove    in    the 
Villa  Borghese.     But  you  could  hardly  call  a 
berretta  a  whole  king.     It  was  quite  a  different 
matter  in  London,  for  the  King  was  there  to  be 
seen,  and  I,  with  my  chin  resting  on  a  Bobby's 
broad  shoulder,  waited  only  to  see  him.     The 
great  state  coach  rattled  down  the  street  slowly 
with    a    lumbersome,    unwieldy    majesty    and 
pomp.     Hats  were  lifted  in  respectful  silence. 
I  remember  that  my  heart  beat  as  the  prancing 
horses  came  abreast.    Then  I  caught  sight  of  the 
familiar  profile  of  the  King,  and  something  in- 
explicable and  unrecognisable  rose  in  me  from 
the  mysterious  depths  of  my  being.     I  had  to 
cheer.    So  I  cheered.    My  voice  rose  above  the 
British  silence,   the   British   decorum,   like   an 
hysterical   and   blood-curdling   Indian   whoop. 
The  King  and  several  thousand  people  turned 
astonished  eyes  on  me;  the  long  row  of  police- 
men stiffened.     Then   the   coach   creaked   and 
rattled   past,    turned    at   right   angles   into    St. 
James,   and   the   incident  was   closed.     I   had 
cheered.  .  .  . 

At  Pensacola  I  suppressed  the  impulse  stern- 
ly, for  I  could  not  have  cheered  aviators  who 
take  the  glorious  business  of  flying  as  uncon- 
cernedly as  the  English  take  the  historical  busi- 
ness of  kings. 

[249] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Mechanics  wearing  hip-length  rubber  boots 
splashed  out  into  the  shallow  water  to  hold  the 
machines  in  leash  and  to  preserve  the  exact  bal- 
ance of  the  great  wings  while  the  pilots  scram- 
bled aboard.  Then  suddenly,  with  a  staccato 
roar  and  a  blinding  shower  of  spray,  they  were 
off!  Then  they  were  clear  of  the  water,  skim- 
ming just  above  it  with  taut  wings.  Then  up 
with  a  graceful  swoop,  up  and  up  and  still  up 
— the  sun  glinting  along  the  planes.  They  shot 
away  from  the  beach  one  after  the  other  until 
the  sky  was  full  of  dipping,  wheeling  monsters. 
They  poked  their  blunt  noses  straight  at  the  sun, 
climbing  until  the  throbbing  of  their  engines 
came  to  us  as  faint  as  a  pulse  beat.  They  passed 
and  repassed  each  other  across  the  face  of  the 
blazing  sky.  They  coasted  down  to  the  water 
again  with  subdued  hums  like  heavy  bumble- 
bees swollen  to  nightmarish  proportions. 

Having  likened  them  to  every  winged  thing 
but  the  common  house-fly,  my  superlatives 
sizzled  off  into  speechlessness,  and  the  aviator, 
greatly  relieved,  took  me  over  to  see  the 
dirigible.  It  had  just  arrived  and  had  been  tied 
up  in  its  kennel,  looking  very  much  like  a  long, 
yellow  dachshund.  It  was  squashy  and  soft  to 
the  prodding  finger,  and  I  was  surprised  to 
find  myself  on  intimate  terms  with  a  dirigible 

[250] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

and  saying  that  it  felt  like  a  "very  old  orange." 
As  it  is  the  dirigible,  I  was  snubbed  for  being 
facetious  and  made  to  feel  that  I  had  taken 
liberties  with  a  divinity.  Yet  I  suppose  Sieg- 
fried might  have  grown  used  to  the  dragon  in 
time!  The  dirigible's  kennel,  to  tell  the  truth, 
was  more  impressive — a  great  floating  hangar, 
truly  magnificent  in  proportion,  which  can  be 
towed  to  sea  and  so  turned  with  the  wind  that 
the  dirigible  is  able  to  leave  its  shelter  and  to 
re-enter  it  with  the  utmost  facility.  Taking  a 
dirigible  to  sea  would  be  as  exciting,  it  seems  to 
me,  as  giving  a  dinotherium  a  ride  in  a  swan 
boat! 

We  walked  gingerly  about  the  recumbent 
monster,  stepping  over  ropes,  chains  and  snake- 
like tubings,  vaguely  fearful  in  the  unfamiliar 
atmosphere  of  making  some  misstep  which 
would  precipitate  a  calamity.  The  vast  interior 
of  the  hangar  was  as  cool  and  shadowy  as  a 
cathedral  transept.  Only  where  the  great  can- 
vas curtains  of  the  entrance  were  looped  back, 
a  patch  of  hot,  noon  sky  blazed  magnificently. 

Friends  "with  the  submarines"  were  expect- 
ing us  for  lunch,  and  we  had  been  told  that  the 
Admiral's  "barge"  would  be  waiting  for  us  at 
the  Yard  wharf  to  take  us  out  to  the  Columbia. 
Already  little  chills  of  excitement  were  creep- 

[251] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

ing  over  me  at  the  thought  of  having  lunch  with 
an  admiral  and  an  indefinite  number  of  "other 
officers."  While  Allan  and  the  aviator  were 
examining  the  dirigible's  car  I  slipped  behind 
a  convenient  bulge  in  the  creature's  cigar-shaped 
anatomy,  and  squinting  into  a  pocket  mirror 
which  is  about  the  size  of  a  fifty  cent 
piece  and  just  as  successful  in  reflecting  me,  I 
powdered  my  nose  and  settled  my  hat  at  a  more 
rakish  angle.  When  I  emerged  looking,  as 
Allan  instantly  remarked,  like  a  whited 
sepulchre,  it  was  time  to  go  in  search  of  the 
"barge."  So  we  said  good-bye  to  the  patient 
aviator,  insinuating  a  few  last  questions  into  our 
gratitude,  and  hurried  away  to  keep  our 
rendezvous  at  the  wharf. 

The  "barge,"  of  course,  was  a  shining,  brass- 
trimmed  nifty  horse-power  motor-boat.  It  shot 
away  from  the  Yard  wharf,  bearing  us  toward 
lunch  with  a  delicious,  exhilarating  leap, 
cutting  a  path  like  the  churning  wake  of  an  in- 
jured sperm-whale  across  the  harbour.  The 
soles  of  our  feet  tickled  responsively  to  the  , 
shivering  vibrations  of  the  engine.  We  passed 
close  to  the  rakish  destroyer  McDonough  and 
had  a  blurred  glimpse  of  a  half  a  dozen  sub- 
marines lying  side  by  side  and  swarming  with 
men.      Overhead   the   great   white    birds    still 

[252] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

circled  and  dipped,  still  coasted  nose-down  to 
the  water  or  shot  into  the  face  of  the  sun.  Real 
birds,  white-breasted,  hovered  over  the  warships 
and  wheeled  in  the  wake  of  a  big  grey  liner 
which  steamed  slowly  towards  the  open  sea. 
There  was  a  gay  flutter  of  flags, — brilliant  spots 
of  colour  against  the  blue  and  white  of  the 
world.  A  magnificent  activity  everywhere — 
little  spurts  of  grey  smoke  and  the  long  wisps  of 
dazzling  steam  snatched  skyward  and  the  glitter- 
ing path  of  fast  launches  passing  and  repassing 
across  the  shining  water.  A  submarine,  like  a 
thin,  black  pencil,  detached  itself  from  the  others 
and  moved  slowly  up  the  harbour,  the  crew 
walking  along  its  narrow  spine  like  men  on  a 
raft.  Looking  back,  we  could  see  the  floating 
hangar  and  the  blazing  white  of  the  Yard  build- 
ings. It  was  a  fine  moment.  Before  us  lay  a 
pageant  of  American  preparedness  on  the  sea 
and  in  the  air,  and  we  forgot  carping  criticisms, 
odious  comparisons  and  doleful  forebodings 
long  enough  to  be  proud  of  our  country.  The 
spectacle  at  Pensacola  was  both  creditable  and 
impressive.  We  find  so  much  to  depreciate  in 
these  days  of  preparation  and  anxiety  that  any 
real  emotion,  any  thrill  of  genuine  enthusiasm, 
is  cause  for  rejoicing. 

At  lunch  there  was  very  little  talk  of  war, 

[253] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

and  that,  I  suppose,  was  as  it  should  be.  We 
spoke  of  the  U-53,  and  the  Admiral  showed  us 
some  photographs  of  the  crafty  and  daring 
undersea  boat  which  he  had  had  framed  and 
hung  on  the  walls  of  the  mess  room.  I  am  won- 
dering whether  they  are  still  there.  I  fancy  they 
are,  for  there  is  nothing  a  good  fighter  admires 
more  than  a  "sporting"  enemy,  and  the  U-53 
was  all  of  that. 

We  did  not  know  that  while  we  were  enjoy- 
ing the  unaffected  and  delightful  hospitality  of 
the  Columbia,  word  had  been  flashed  all  over 
the  United  States  that  Germany  intended  to 
carry  on  her  submarine  warfare.  The  Admiral 
and  every  one  at  the  luncheon  table  but  our- 
selves knew  that  the  war-cloud  had  rolled  up 
over  the  horizon  and  had  spread  like  a  menacing 
shadow  over  America.  They  knew  that  the 
dramatic  spectacle  of  submarines,  seaplanes  and 
warships  all  about  us  was  soon  destined  to  be- 
come something  more  than  a  dramatic  pageant. 
Yet  our  talk  dealt  pleasantly  with  other  things. 
It  was  not  until  we  got  back  to  Pensacola,  late 
that  afternoon,  that  we  found  out  for  ourselves. 
Allan  snatched  a  paper  from  a  howling  dervish 
of  a  newsboy  who  flashed  by  shrieking,  "War 
Extra!"  and  we  stood  on  the  sidewalk  to  read 

[254] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

the  glaring  headlines.  ...  It  had  come,  then, 
and  so  soon! 

That  night,  as  if  the  news  had  stirred  heaven 
and  earth,  a  thunderstorm  roared  across  the 
Gulf.  The  first  blinding  flash  of  lightning  woke 
us.  We  heard  thick  splatters  of  rain,  and  a 
thunder  clap  which  shook  the  San  Carlos  like 
an  earthquake.  Then  the  wind  came,  with  a 
thin  and  querulous  whine  that  rose  in  pitch,  in- 
tensified, developed  into  a  shriek.  Chairs  and 
tables  on  the  open-air  terrace  down  below  turned 
over  with  a  clatter.  We  heard  bellboys  and 
night  watchmen  scurrying  back  and  forth  to  the 
rescue.  Doors  slammed  and  rattled,  and  the 
terrific  impact  of  the  wind  drove  the  rain  in  solid 
sheets  against  our  windows.  I  cowered  under 
the  bedclothes  and  called  into  the  next  room  to 
Allan. 

"Are  you  awake?" 

"I  am." 

"What  on  earth  is  the  time?" 

He  waited  until  the  theatrical  lightning  had 
shown  him  the  face  of  his  watch. 

"Four  o'clock." 

"Are  we  going  to  take  the  six  o'clock  train  to 
Mobile?"  I  howled. 

"If  we're  still  alive." 

Then  we  both  crawled  under  our  pillows  and 

[255] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

tried  to  shut  out  the  terrifying  reverberations  of 
the  implacable  wind.  When  we  woke  it  was 
nine  o'clock,  and  the  sun  was  shining  crisply. 
The  thermometer  had  fallen  to  twenty-two  de- 
grees and  the  radiator  was  blowing  steam  bub- 
bles in  an  unaccustomed  effort  to  heat  the  San 
Carlos.  We  took  a  later  train  to  Mobile,  leaving 
Pensacola  ashiver  in  the  grip  of  an  icy  frost. 
But  we  were  still  alive. 


[256] 


CHAPTER  X 

A    DAY    IN    MOBILE    AND   ON   TO   NEW   ORLEANS 

WHERE    WE    MEET    A    VERY    CAPABLE 

YOUNG    WOMAN 

"To  Jean  Baptist e  Le  Moyne 

Sieur  de  Bienville 

Native  of  Montreal,  Canada, 

Naval  Officer 

Of  France 

Governor  of  Louisiana 

And  Founder  of  the  First  Capital 

Mobile, 

iyn 

Born  1680— Died  I J 68 

With  the  Genius  to  Create  an  Empire 

And  the  Courage  to  Maintain  It 

Patient  Amid  Faction  and  Successful  Even 

In  Defeat 

He  Brought  His  Settlement 

The  Prosperity  of  True  Civilization 

And  the  Happiness  of  Real  Christianity. 

He  Who  Founds  a  City  Builds  Himself 

A  Life-Long  Monument." 

In  this  fashion  Mobile  expresses  her  gratitude 
to  the  Canadian  who  immortalised  himself  in 

[257] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

the  founding  of  both  New  Orleans  and  Mobile, 
and  in  putting  the  Latin  imprint  upon  the  two 
cities  guaranteed  their  charm  for  all  time.  You 
may  see  the  generous  inscription  in  Bienville 
Square,  where  the  citizens  of  Mobile  have  raised 
a  granite  cross  to  the  great  Frenchman,  proving 
themselves  more  appreciative  than  New 
Orleans,  who  has  so  far  neglected  to  honour 
Bienville's  memory  that  only  one  small  street 
has  been  named  after  him  in  the  Creole  City. 
Mobile  dedicated  its  most  beautiful  square,  a 
magnificent  grove  of  live  oaks  in  the  centre  of 
the  city,  to  the  man  who  followed  in  the  foot- 
steps of  La  Salle  and  Iberville  and  not  only 
carried  the  French  flag  to  the  very  mouth  of  the 
Mississippi,  but  planted  it  as  far  east  as  Florida. 
Mobile  was  the  capital  of  French  Louisiana 
until  1723,  and  thereafter  the  city  changed  hands 
with  the  dizzy  speed  of  a  juggler's  ball,  sharing 
the  fate  of  Pensacola  and  New  Orleans,  and 
passing  from  the  French  to  the  English,  from 
the  English  to  the  Spanish,  and  finally  casting 
in  its  lot  with  the  new  and  untried  United  States. 
The  colonists  had  very  little  to  say  as  to  what 
their  allegiance  should  be,  for  the  political  in- 
triguers of  Europe  pulled  the  wires  that  made 
Louisiana  a  French,  English  or  Spanish  prov- 
ince.   Boundaries  were  elastic,  flags  were  hoisted 

[258] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

only  to  be  hauled  down  again,  and  the  stamp 
of  three  nationalities  was  put  upon  the  people 
who  had  ventured  into  the  uncharted  wilderness 
in  search  of  religious  freedom,  riches  or  the  mad- 
dest, boldest  adventure.  Mobile  profited  by  her 
cosmopolitan  experience,  and  like  a  woman  who 
has  lived  in  many  countries  and  who  speaks 
many  languages,  the  city  has  emerged  from  her 
varied  past  socially  expert. 

The  softness  of  the  name,  Mobile,  Maubila 
of  the  Spaniards,  is  both  gracious  and  dis- 
tinguished. Such  a  combination  of  phonetics  as 
"Mobile,  Alabama"  could  not  belong  to  a  lout- 
ish city.  And  indeed  one  must  dust  off  one's 
modern  carelessness  before  one  enters  the 
fashionable  Mobile's  drawing  room.  She  is  an 
old  woman  now  but  she  is  a  great  personality, 
a  creature  of  distinction,  still  intolerant  of  the 
leisurely  and  careless  society  of  to-day.  In  the 
brilliant  ante-bellum  days  she  filled  her  salons 
with  governors  and  generals,  European  nobles, 
rich  planters,  statesmen  and  merchants  from 
Charleston  and  Boston,  Liverpool,  London, 
Glasgow  and  New  York.  And  because  she  was 
witty,  beautiful  and  aristocratic,  she  attracted 
men  and  women  like  herself  and  created  around 
herself  a  sort  of  social  glamour,  a  charm  that 
was  both  rare  and  distinguished,  and  won  her  a 

[25.9] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

place  with  Charleston  and  Richmond  in  the 
social  sun.  She  became  so  finished  a  product 
that  one  of  her  daughters,  Madame  Octavis 
Walton  Levert,  was  presented  to  Queen  Victoria 
at  a  "special  drawing  room"  at  a  time  when 
Americans  were  still  popularly  supposed  to  be 
savages  and  to  live  in  wigwams.  So  it  is  not 
altogether  improbable  that  Madame  Levert 
placed  the  first  bomb  under  the  exalted  edifice 
of  British  antagonism  and  helped  to  open  the 
way  to  a  mutual  Anglo-American  social  under- 
standing. 

We  came  to  Mobile  from  Pensacola  across  a 
lovely  slice  of  Alabama  that  has  been  rudely 
devastated  by  the  1916  storms.  Trees  were 
snapped  off  two  or  three  feet  from  the  ground 
and  thrown  forward  on  their  faces  in  an  atti- 
tude of  Moslem  prayer.  The  hurricanes  left 
a  wide  trail  of  these  prostrated  pines  and  oaks, 
and  no  one  seems  to  have  taken  the  trouble  to 
haul  away  the  dead  wood  or  to  prop  up  the 
over-zealous  but  still  living  worshippers.  But 
the  country  is  rich  in  timber,  and  where  there 
is  a  surplus  of  anything  there  is  always  small 
regard  for  the  source  of  supply.  If  the  Italians 
of  Tuscany  could  only  see  that  wasted  firewood! 
Where  kindling  wood  is  worth  its  weight  in 
gold,  a  whole  forest  of  decaying  trees  would 
[260] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

cause  the  mouth  to  water  —  Like  Millet's 
canvas,  "The  Reapers,"  which  always  makes  my 
back  ache  if  I  look  at  it  too  long,  the  snapped- 
otf  pines  along  the  way  to  Mobile  are  so 
eternally  bent  over  in  an  awkward  attitude  of 
prayer  that  I  groaned  out  of  sympathy. 

And  again  the  character  of  the  country  had 
mysteriously  changed  as  if  man-made  boundary 
lines  could  transform  the  colour  of  the  earth 
the  smell  of  the  air  and  the  very  characteristics 
of  the  people.    Alabama  was  not  Alabama  until 
after  the  Louisiana  Purchase,  but  it  is  as  dif- 
ferent   from    Florida    on    the    one    hand    and 
Louisiana  on  the  other  as  black  is  from  white 
I  have  never  understood  why  the  crossing  of  a 
surveyed  line  should  take  one  from  the  racial 
and  geographical   characteristics   of  one  State 
into  those  of  another,  why  Connecticut  is  so  un- 
like Rhode  Island,  why  Vermont  is  so  entirely 
different  from  New  Hampshire  and  so  on    ad 
infinitum.    Florida  is  still  Spanish  and  Louisi- 
ana is  French,  while  Alabama,  set  exactly  be- 
tween the  two  and  only  separated  from  them  by 
an  imaginary  line  and  a  different  colour  on  the 
map,  is  wholly  American.     Alabama  still  be- 
longs to  a  social  past  that  was  characteristically 
American  in  spite  of,  or  perhaps  because  of  its 
cosmopolitanism.     It  seemed   to  us   that  even 

[261] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

the  soil  changed  as  soon  as  we  crossed  the  border, 
for  the  foothills  of  the  Appalachians  pour  down 
to  the  Gulf,  lifting  the  coast  line  of  Alabama  out 
of  the  water  and  mercifully  ridding  it  of  salt 
marshes  and  swampy  bayous. 

In  Florida  we  had  touched  upon  the  tropics, 
passing  through  an  endless  waste  of  oak  and 
cypress  forest  sunk  to  its  knees  in  water  and 
clogged  with  vine  and  moss.  A  Martian  must 
see  Florida  as  a  beautiful  green  land  pitted  with 
lakes  and  laced  with  rivers,  encroached  upon  by 
the  waters  of  both  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico.  Wherever  Florida  rears  her- 
self out  of  the  swamps  there  is  a  wealth  of  bloom 
and  the  moist,  damp  air  is  filled  with  the  spicy 
sweetness  of  green  bay  and  orange,  live  oak, 
holly,  oleanders  and  magnolia,  high  reeds  and 
bull-briers,  sedge  and  palmetto,  Spanish  dagger 
and  cypress.  The  country  is  grey  and  dusty  in 
the  early  winter,  and  for  that  reason  perhaps  a 
disappointment  to  those  travellers  who  leave  the 
North  too  soon  and  cannot  wait  in  Florida  for 
the  miraculous  flowering  of  bushes  and  trees 
that  makes  the  semi-tropical  spring  an  ecstatic 
symphony  of  sweet  odours  and  blazing  colours. 
All  the  way  down  the  Atlantic  coast  the  winter 
landscape  is  a  dusty,  cinder-grey  procession  of 
moss-choked  swamps  and  brittle  palmetto  scrub, 

[262] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

and  there  is  no  variation  in  the  deadly  monotony 
except  where  the  hills  of  Tallahassee  rise  mys- 
teriously out  of  the  water-soaked  plain 

We  did  not  see  the  azaleas  in  Mobile,  for  they 
bloom  towards  the  end  of  February  and,  with 
our  usual  poor  luck,  we  had  come  too  soon  for 
their  blooming.  The  azaleas  of  Mobile  do  not 
grow  in  pots  to  live  and  die  during  Easter  week, 
like  our  Northern  azaleas.  They  are  not  decked 
out  with  blue  bows  and  crinkly  tissue  paper  for 
exhibition  on  the  family  piano.  In  Mobile,  an 
azalea  is  a  tree,  often  growing  as  high  as  the 
Italian  camellia  and  just  as  richly  starred  with 
blossoms.  I  am  repeating,  dear  Reader,  what  I 
heard  in  Mobile,  and  you  need  not  put  your 
finger  on  the  side  of  your  nose  and  accuse  me 
of  having  a  microscopic  eye,  like  a  horse's, 
which  enlarges  everything  it  sees. 

The  only  flowers  I  saw  in  Mobile  were  in 
the  florist  shop  windows,  for  nothing  but  a 
Christmas  tree  could  have  survived  the  bitter 
cold.  There  were  undoubtedly  some  bitter 
tragedies  in  the  great  orange  groves  and  truck 
gardens  of  Mobile  County.  Even  the  hardy 
Satsuma  trees  must  have  shivered  in  the  icy  wind 
that  tore  across  Alabama  from  the  North. 

Travelling  is  a  vicarious  enjoyment  unless  cli- 
mate and  scenery  are  both  guaranteed  in  ad- 

[263] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

vance.  Mobile  advertises  a  medium  tempera- 
ture and  states  positively  that  muslin  in  winter 
and  furs  in  summer  are  the  usual  thing  on  Mo- 
bile Bay.  And  it  must  have  been  that  we  are 
hoodoos,  for  Mobile  is  strictly  truthful  about 
everything  else,  even  stretching  a  point  to  assure 
the  fisherman  who  goes  to  Coden  or  to  Dau- 
phine  Island  for  "big  game"  fish  that  if  tarpon 
and  crevallier  aren't  biting  well,  John  Rolston 
of  Rolston's  Hotel  will  tell  him  the  strict  truth. 
This,  from  a  man  who  rents  launches,  bait  and 
tackle,  is  the  sort  of  integrity  that  touches  the 
heart. 

But  the  inhabitants  of  Mobile  apparently  live 
under  a  popular  misapprehension  as  to  the 
weather,  for  they  were  not  prepared  for  the 
antics  of  the  thermometer  and  went  chattering 
about  the  city  wrapped  to  the  tips  of  their  blue 
noses  in  woollen  mufflers.  Our  blood  had  ad- 
justed itself  to  tropical  heat  in  Pensacola  and, 
taken  by  surprise,  refused  to  meet  the  situation. 
There  is  nothing  on  earth  more  depressing  than 
being  too  cold  unless  it  is  being  too  hot!  And 
in  Mobile  I  was  decidedly  too  cold.  Time  and 
time  again  we  tucked  ourselves  into  the  revolv- 
ing front  doors  of  the  Battle  House  and  tried  to 
brave  the  frosty  wind,  each  time  making  the 
complete  revolution  and  spinning  back  into  the 

[264] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

warm  lobby  again,  baffled  and  beaten.  I  had 
come  to  Mobile  with  romantic  intentions,  but 
they  were  nipped  in  the  bud;  I  had  wanted  to 
make  a  sentimental  pilgrimage  to  Augusta  Jane 
Evan's  home,  because  I  had  read  "St.  Elmo" 
and  "Tales  of  the  Alamo"  when  I  should  have 
been  reading  Hans  Christian  Andersen,  and  I 
owed  Augusta  Jane  Evans  a  debt  of  gratitude 
for  stolen  sweets.  I  had  wanted  to  pay  humble 
tribute  to  Joseph  Jefferson's  rare  and  gentle  art 
and  in  looking  at  his  Mobile  home  to  utter  a 
little  prayer  of  thankfulness  for  the  legend  of 
Rip  Van  Winkle  and  for  Jefferson's  interpreta- 
tion of  it.  Jefferson  opened  the  magic  door  of 
the  theatre  to  me.  "Rip  Van  Winkle"  was  my 
first  play,  and  I  can  remember  to  this  day  how 
I  wept  for  Rip's  lost  youth  and  the  tragedy  of 
his  return  from  sleep.  In  those  days  I  could 
weep  at  the  spectacle  of  age  because  I  was  so 
immune  from  it  myself.  But  now  I  am  twenty- 
seven  and  the  gibbering  monster  is  at  hand  al- 
ready, strangely  transformed  and  glorified,  as 
welcome  as  Rip  himself  would  be. 

Jefferson  appeared  in  amateur  theatricals  at 
the  Old  Mobile  Theater  when  he  was  a  little 
boy,  and  the  city  has  been  grateful  enough  to 
the  lovable  stroller  to  place  a  tablet  on  his  home, 
paying  tribute  to  a  "legal  vagabond"  as  if  he 

[265] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

were  a  general,  an  admiral  or  a  millionaire 
philanthropist.  It  is  not  often  that  cities  honour 
their  players,  preferring  to  raise  monuments  to 
more  concrete  benefactors  and  forgetting  the 
inestimable  debt  humanity  owes  to  those  gra- 
cious men  and  women  who  have  the  gift  of  tears 
and  laughter. 

We  finally  did  leave  our  hotel  and  ran  brisk- 
ly around  the  corner  to  Bienville  Square  and 
up  and  down  Government  Street  once  or  twice, 
battling  our  way  against  the  tempestuous  wind 
with  our  heads  down  and  our  eyes  shut.  We 
fought  valiantly  to  do  our  duty  by  Mobile,  for 
it  is  in  the  spirit  of  the  place  to  ward  off  defeat 
with  one's  dying  breath.  De  Soto  set  the  fashion 
by  battling  furiously  with  Tuscaloosa's  warriors 
in  the  old  Maubila;  Andrew  Jackson  fanned 
the  flame  by  defeating  the  British  and  their 
Indian  allies  under  Colonel  Nichols  in  1814, 
and  during  the  Civil  War  Admiral  Farragut, 
sailing  up  Mobile  Bay  lashed  to  the  mast  of  his 
ohip  like  a  modern  Ulysses,  cried,  "Damn  the 
mines!"  and  landed  at  South  End,  safe  and 
sound.  But  it  was  hard  to  subdue  the  fighting 
spirit  of  aristocratic  Mobile.  After  Farragut 
had  captured  Fort  Morgan,  the  city  boiled  and 
bubbled  with  rebellion  for  a  year.  The  last 
battle  of  the  Civil  War  took  place  just  outside 
[266] 


SHIPS  FROM  THE  MEXICAN  GULF  AND  THE  CARIBBEAN 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

Mobile  at  Blakely  on  Sunday  afternoon,  April 
9,  1865,  several  hours  after  Lee  had  surrendered. 
So  that  Lee's  army  really  struck  the  penultimate 
blow  for  the  flag  of  the  Confederacy.  And  when 
the  last  futile  hope  had  died,  the  poet-priest  of 
the  South,  Father  Ryan,  voiced  the  tragic  de- 
spair of  the  conquered  people: 

"Furl  that  banner,  softly,  slowly, 
Treat  it  gently — it  is  holy — 
For  it  droops  above  the  dead. 
Touch  it  not — unfold  it  never, 
Let  it  droop  there,  furled  forever, 
For  its  people's  hopes  are  dead." 

Father  Ryan  was  wrong,  for  hope  is  imperish- 
able. The  Confederate  flag  was  indeed  furled 
forever,  but  another  flag  floats  bravely  above 
the  Confederate  dead  and  Mobile  has  just  hon- 
oured one  of  her  sons  who  died  for  it  at  Vera 
Cruz  in  1914.  Esau  Frohlichstein  was  the  name 
of  the  Mobile  boy  who  followed  the  Stars  and 
Stripes  into  the  Mexican  town,  and  you  may 
see  the  tablet  to  his  memory  in  Fearn  Way. 

As  we  approached  Mobile  from  Pensacola 
our  train  had  skirted  the  river  front,  passing  a 
beautiful  procession  of  large  schooners  from  the 
Mexican  Gulf  and  the  Caribbean  Sea.  They 
rode  at  anchor  in  the  centre  of  the  yellow  stream, 
[267] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

their  spars  and  masts  rimmed  magnificently  with 
the  crisp  winter  sunlight.  It  seemed  to  us  that 
there  were  more  sailing  vessels  than  there  were 
steamers  in  the  port,  and  it  cheered  us  enor- 
mously to  think  that  the  four-masted  and  five- 
masted  merchantman  has  not  vanished  entirely 
from  the  high  seas.  The  great  ships  carry  lum- 
ber and  coal  to  small  ports  in  the  far  South. 
Long  life  to  them  and  to  their  masters  and  to 
their  crews!  We  saluted  them  once  more  as 
our  train  drew  out  of  Mobile  again,  lifting  our 
hats  figuratively  to  their  beauty  and  registering 
a  vow  to  return  to  Mobile  in  the  azalea  season 
when  the  city  will  have  taken  off  her  woollen 
mufflers  and  put  on  muslin  again. 

We  were  not  in  New  Orleans  during  the 
Carnival  week,  and  I  am  not  altogether  sorry. 
When  we  were  there,  the  Creole  City  had  not 
put  on  her  cap  and  bells  to  romp  with  Comus, 
Momus  and  Proteus.  She  had  not  hung  in- 
candescent bulbs  about  her  beautiful  neck  or 
swathed  herself  in  flags  and  bunting.  Where 
most  travellers  see  her  rollicking  behind  a  paper- 
cambric  mask  and  a  shapeless  domino,  we  saw 
her  in  her  least  self-conscious  and  most  gracious 
mood.  She  was  indifferent  to  our  tourist  curi- 
osity, but  tender  when  she  found  that  we  had 
come  to  her  as  lovers. 

[268] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

We  had  the  vieux  carre  pretty  much  to  our- 
selves, and  there,  in  the  twisted,  narrow  old 
streets  we  encountered  the  real  New  Orleans. 
Modern  New  Orleans,  who  lives,  officially,  on 
the  other  side  of  Canal  Street  in  the  American 
quarter,  insists  that  the  real  New  Orleans  is  a 
business  woman  pure  and  simple,  a  creature  of 
brains  and  ability,  who  wears  starched  shirt- 
waists and  flat-heeled  shoes,  and  who  would 
rather  pound  a  typewriter  than  play  an  old- 
fashioned  love  song  on  the  family  piano.  But 
we  knew  better.  We  discovered,  as  all  true 
lovers  of  New  Orleans  do  sooner  or  later,  that 
the  delectable  creature  leads  a  double  life. 

The  scandal  troubles  the  dweller  in  New 
Orleans;  he  tries  to  hide  it  from  you,  Heaven 
knows  why.  Probably  because  he  is  convinced 
that  such  an  irregularity  in  the  city's  life,  if  it 
were  generally  known,  might  injure  her  busi- 
ness standing,  he  keeps  it  dark.  For  the  dweller 
in  New  Orleans  is  more  interested  in  the  city's 
present  and  future  prosperity  than  in  the  most 
alluring  and  mendacious  stories  of  her  past.  He 
wants  you  to  think  of  her  as  a  business  woman, 
and  he  doesn't  care  a  hang  whether  you  are 
aesthetically  upset  by  the  ink-stains  on  her 
lovely  fingertips,  or  the  soot  on  the  end  of  her 
delightful  nose.     He  leads  you  at  great  length 

[269] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

and  with  some  ostentation  through  Canal  Street 
and  points  out  the  big  department  stores  with 
their  smart  window  displays  and  their  revolving 
doors  sucking  in  the  tide  of  women  shoppers  as 
whirlpools  gobble  jetsam.  He  shows  you  the 
impressive  Moving  Picture  theatres  built  to  ac- 
commodate opera-size  audiences  and  serving 
celluloid  dramas  to  the  accompaniment  of 
churchly  organ  music. 

He  takes  you  into  the  Grunewald  Hotel  and, 
steering  you  with  an  expert  and  accustomed 
hand  through  the  mobs  in  the  gilt  and  marble 
lobby,  dives  with  you  into  the  Cave,  an  artificial 
Paradise  for  those  modern  spirits  who  prefer  to 
eat  in  the  dark,  who  really  like  the  ukelele  and 
the  big  bass  drum,  and  who  enjoy  that  sort  of 
vaudeville  which  encroaches  upon  the  dining- 
room  table. 

To  further  impress  you,  if  you  are  inclined  to 
doubt  Miss  New  Orleans'  up-to-dateness,  he 
dines  with  you  in  the  scented  magnificence  of 
the  St.  Charles  or  at  Kolb's,  a  German  restaurant 
in  St.  Charles  Street  where  Alt  Heidelberg  is 
reconstructed  to  suit  American  taste  and  where 
nickel-topped  steins,  china  pipes,  oak  furniture, 
beamed  ceilings  and  Swiss  waiters  are  calculated 
to  throw  you  into  a  German  state  of  mind.  If 
this  is  a  subtle  propaganda,  there  was  something 
[270] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

wrong  with  the  artificial  atmosphere  when  we 
were  there,  for  the  big,  smoke-clouded  dining- 
room  was  full  of  Americans  reading  the  latest 
War  Extras  and  taking  the  Times-Picayune's 
incendiary  editorials  and  fiery  anti-Teutonism 
together  with  their  sauerkraut  und  bier. 

And  as  for  us,  we  ordered  Frau  Kolb's  own 
particular  "fried  chicken  Southern  style"  and 
ate  it  with  relish  while  we  discussed  what 
America  would  do  to  the  Horrible  Hun  when 
she  finally  woke  from  her  lethargy  and  gath- 
ered herself  together. 

Inside,  an  atmosphere  redolent  of  the  new 
Germany,  an  American  interpretation,  by  Ger- 
mans, of  the  Hofbrauhaus;  outside,  war  extras 
still  limp  and  wet  from  the  press,  selling  like  hot 
cakes!  The  indescribably  hoarse  shouts  of  the 
newsboys  drifted  in  to  us  and  made  strange  dis- 
cords with  the  steady  flow  of  German  that 
poured  out  of  the  swinging,  eternally  banging 
kitchen  doors! 

When  I  had  finished  the  delectable  fried 
chicken,  a  fried  chicken  worthy  of  the  best 
Southern  culinary  traditions,  a  fried  chicken 
worthy  of  a  Creole  mammy,  I  asked  the  Swiss 
waiter  whether  Frau  Kolb  had  prepared  the 
dish  herself.  I  was  told  that  her  recipe  had 
passed  from  chef  to  chef  of  the  establishment, 

[271] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

but  that  Frau  Kolb  had  retired  from  the  activi- 
ties of  the  restaurant  kitchens. 

The  dweller  in  New  Orleans,  still  fearful  that 
you  may  have  discovered  the  scandal  in  New 
Orleans'  life  and  feeling  that  he  must  entertain 
you  before  he  can  satisfy  the  desire  of  his  heart 
and  tell  you  of  his  sweetheart's  business  ability, 
proceeds  to  entertain  you,  as  he  does  everything, 
lavishly.  For  the  dweller  in  New  Orleans,  more 
than  any  man  in  the  world  except  perhaps  the 
New  Yorker,  opens  his  pocket-book  as  well  as  his 
heart  to  the  stranger.  In  him  the  traditional 
hospitality  of  the  South  is  exaggerated  tenfold ; 
he  comes  of  a  long  ancestry  of  reckless,  spend- 
thrift, thoroughly  generous  and  high-spirited 
men  who  drank,  loved,  fought,  prayed  and  died 
with  open-handed  generosity.  It  is  in  his  blood 
to  share  his  pleasures  and  to  send  the  traveller 
away  with  his  pockets,  his  handbag,  his  trunk, 
his  hands  and  even  the  crown  of  his  hat 
crammed  with  gifts. 

For  what  other  purpose  was  the  delectable 
praline,  that  sugar-cane  and  pecan  concoction 
of  surpassing  delicacy  and  diabolical  temptation, 
invented  save  to  ravish  the  soul  of  the  visitor? 
I  was  never  able  to  pass  a  praline  shop  without 
stopping  to  buy  one  of  the  big  candies  that  look 
so  much  like  Spanish  doubloons  and  taste  like 

[272] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

something  one  might  buy  in  a  candy  store  in 
Paradise.  They  were  packed  for  shipment  in 
ornamental  boxes;  by  simply  writing  the  ad- 
dress of  the  "loved  one  up  North"  on  the  cover 
and  paying  a  dollar  and  a  few  odd  cents,  you  can 
start  another  advertisement  of  New  Orleans  on 
its  way.  There  is  a  flavour  about  the  praline 
amazingly  suggestive  of  New  Orleans  itself;  it 
is  a  romantic  taste,  and  I  would  be  willing  to 
wager  that  thousands  of  tourists  have  been 
drawn  across  the  continent  in  pursuit  of  it,  just 
as  in  ante-bellum  days  one  turned  toward  Vienna 
for  coffee  'n'  rolls.  I  ate  pralines  in  the  street; 
I  nibbled  them  in  the  grateful  shadows  of  the 
Movie  theatres;  I  tried  to  satiate  myself  with 
the  elusive  deliciousness,  but  I  could  not  have 
succeeded,  for  the  very  memory  of  the  adorable 
confection  brings  tears  to  my  eyes. 

Nothing  that  the  dweller  in  New  Orleans  had 
to  offer  could  match  the  peculiar  charm  of  the 
praline.  And  I  think  he  resented  our  affection 
for  the  frivolous  candy  as  if  it  reflected  in  some 
mysterious  way  upon  the  integrity,  the  ability, 
the  astounding  business  talent  of  his  mistress. 

"She  is  modern,"  he  assured  us,  time  and  time 
again,  "absolutely  modern.  The  old  New 
Orleans  is  dead.  Of  course,"  shrugging  his 
shoulders  and  spreading  out  his  hands,  "we  re- 

[273] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

gret  the  passing  of  so  delightful  a  creature.  But 
you  know,  my  dear  friends,  she  was  perverse; 
she  was  dreadfully  dangerous.  She  was  untidy, 
too,  and  never  swept  in  the  corners  or  washed 
down  the  steps  or  polished  the  windows.  When 
the  modern  New  Orleans  came  along,  she  had 
to  drive  out  the  mosquitoes  that  infested  the 
gardens,  carrying  the  yellow  fever  on  their 
poisoned  wings;  she  had  to  rat-proof  the  houses 
for  fear  of  the  bubonic  plague.  The  old  New 
Orleans  was  a  careless  wench  and  altogether 
too  many  people  fell  in  love  with  her.  She  was 
frivolous,  she  danced  too  much;  she  slept  all  day 
and  feasted  all  night.  She  died,  and  the  modern 
New  Orleans — a  splendid  woman,  a  capable 
woman! — set  about  recovering  the  improvident 
creature's  fortune." 

"But,"  we  wanted  to  know,  "does  any  one  ever 
fall  in  love  with  this  modern  New  Orleans?  Do 
people  lose  their  heads,  as  they  used  to,  at  the 
very  sight  of  her?" 

"Why,  yes,"  answered  the  dweller  in  New 
Orleans,  looking  slightly  confused  and  dropping 
his  eyes,  "business  men,  go-ahead  young  men 
adore  her.  She  is  so  supremely  capable.  I  will 
show  you  how  she  amuses  herself.  There  are 
no  more  tawdry  gowns  and  seductive  smiles, 
sly  flirtations  and  serenades,  perfumed  notes  and 

[274] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

stolen  kisses.  Modern  New  Orleans  patterns 
herself  after  New  York  and  Chicago.  She  is 
chic.    You  will  see.  .  .  ." 

You  go  to  the  opera;  it  is  not  the  traditional 
audience  you  have  dreamed  of  finding,  nor  is  the 
performance  given  in  the  old  French  Opera 
House,  Gallier's  famous  theatre  "across  Canal 
Street"  in  the  vieux  carve,  where  Patti  sang  and 
where  the  glorious  traditions  of  French  opera 
were  upheld  for  fifty  years.  It  is,  instead,  Bos- 
ton grand  opera,  an  unworthy  performance  of 
Mascagni's  "Iris,"  which  the  dweller  in  New 
Orleans  offers  you  as  a  sop  for  those  fascinating 
days  of  French  opera,  when  New  Orleans  wore 
all  of  her  jewels,  bared  her  beautiful  neck,  stuck 
a  flower  in  her  hair  and  dazzled  the  ardent 
Creole  beaux  through  the  interminable  operas 
of  another  day.  Meyerbeer,  Auber,  Rossini, 
Donizetti,  Ponchielli — can  you  hear  the  lilting 
arias,  the  trills  and  cadenzas  and  tripping  melo- 
dies? Can  you  see  the  ballerine  floating,  like 
powder  puffs,  across  the  stage?  In  those  days 
the  music  lovers  packed  the  galleries  as  they  do 
in  all  Latin  countries,  and  New  Orleans  got  the 
name  of  being  music-mad  and  therefore  musi- 
cally intelligent,  for  one  grows  out  of  the  other. 
Strakosch  and  Canonge  and  Beauplan  directed 
in  those  golden  days  of  New  Orleans'  musical 

[275] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

past,  and  who  knows  now,  since  great  voices  are 
as  evanescent  as  dandelion  puffs,  how  many 
famous  tenors  and  sopranos  reached  the  climax 
of  their  fame  on  the  stage  of  the  French  Opera 
House? 

Modern  New  Orleans  seems  strangely  content 
to  listen  to  music  in  a  theatre  unhallowed  and 
unseasoned  by  such  precious  memories,  for  the 
old  opera  house  in  the  vieux  carre  is  deserted,  a 
ghost-ridden  place  peeling  and  faded  like  an 
ancient  ballerina,  where  the  "glorious  traditions" 
are  shut  away  with  those  embarrassing  memories 
of  old  New  Orleans. 

But  you  are  not  given  time  to  drop  a  tear  on 
the  grave  of  French  opera.  The  dweller  in  New 
Orleans  hustles  you  into  his  motor  and  you  rush 
smoothly  through  the  city  along  broad  avenues 
bordered  with  palms  and  oaks,  crepe  myrtle  and 
ligustrum,  feathery  bamboo  and  giant  Louisiana 
cane,  past  splendid  modern  homes  set  deeply  in 
gardens  and  girdled  with  wide  lawns,  past  green 
parks  and  monuments  and  impressive  public 
buildings,  out  of  the  city  altogether  to  the  white 
shell  road  which  borders  the  New  Basin  Canal. 
Then  the  dweller  in  New  Orleans  tries  to  break 
all  speed  records,  for  he  loves  speed  as  well  as 
ability,  in  getting  you  to  West  End.  You  shut 
your  eyes,  pray  hard  for  your  guardian  angel 

[276] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

to  clear  the  road  and  count  a  hundred.  When 
you  get  to  ninety-nine  you  are  in  West  End,  a 
brand-new  resort  which  has  been  built  over  the 
ruins  of  an  older  and  possibly  more  likable  resort 
destroyed  several  years  ago  during  one  of  the 
violent  Gulf  storms. 

West  End  is  in  a  painful  state  of  newness; 
where  there  should  be  trees,  a  forest  of  ornamen- 
tal street  lamps  springs  from  the  neat  patches 
of  clipped  green  sward.  The  dweller  in  New 
Orleans  tells  you  that  the  place  is  crowded  in 
summer  and  that  the  automobiles  of  breeze-seek- 
ing New  Orleans  stand  wheel  to  wheel  along  the 
driveway;  with  eloquent  gestures  he  describes 
the  Prismatic  Fountain,  a  sort  of  Wagnerian 
nightmare  of  coloured  lights  and  thin,  high- 
tossed  water  jets  and  drifting  clouds  of  spray. 
But  even  such  cheap  attractions  as  this  cannot 
spoil  the  beauty  of  Pontchartrain,  a  beautiful 
lake  full  of  caprices  and  subject  to  fits  of  anger, 
but  ideal,  in  its  calmer  moods,  for  the  small  sail- 
ing boat,  the  flower-laden  and  lumbersome 
house-boat  and  the  jaunty  pleasure  launch.  It 
perhaps  feels  a  sense  of  its  commercial  impor- 
tance, for  a  canal  is  being  cut  which  will  join 
Pontchartrain  to  the  Mississippi  and  make  a 
great  industrial  artery  of  the  lake.  Modern 
New  Orleans  never  overlooks  an  opportunity 
[277] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

for  trade  expansion.  For  a  long  time  she  has 
had  her  eye  on  a  certain  canal  in  Panama — 

The  dweller  in  New  Orleans  pulled  himself 
up  short,  for  it  is  not  his  custom  to  mention 
business  when  there  are  pleasures  on  hand;  he 
never  wears  a  preoccupied  frown  when  he  is 
playing  host.  He  said  nothing  more  of  Panama 
but  turned  his  car  out  of  West  End  and  took 
us  to  the  Bungalow,  a  roadhouse  on  the  way 
back  to  New  Orleans  famous  for  the  lyric  tal- 
ents of  its  chef  d'orchestre.  The  genial  black 
can  improvise,  to  an  indescribable  tune  of  his 
own,  couplets  without  end.  He  rhymes  as  easily 
as  you  and  I  breathe.  He  grins,  rocks,  shows 
his  capacious  gums  and  spins  verses  as  a  spider 
spins  a  thread.  He  will  take  any  theme  you  offer 
him — war,  politics  or  personalities — put  it  into 
his  extraordinary  black  brain  and  draw  it  out 
again  as  poetry. 

The  dweller  in  New  Orleans  scribbled  our 
names  and  something  about  us  on  the  back  of 
the  menu  card  and  smuggled  the  information 
through  several  black  palms  crossed  with  silver 
to  the  improvisateur  so  that  we  were  astounded 
to  hear  ourselves  immortalised  in  verse.  It  was 
all  perfectly  good-natured  and  in  good  taste,  al- 
though I  can  see  how  one  might  precipitate  some 

[278] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

pretty  scandals  by  giving  the  poet  embarrassing 
personalities  for  elaboration. 

This  sort  of  thing  could  not  have  gone  on  in 
the  New  Orleans  of  the  past,  where  any  familiar- 
ity set  the  young  bloods  off  like  firecrackers.  It 
used  to  be  a  ticklish  business  to  jest  with  a  Creole 
about  the  cut  of  his  nose  or  the  colour  of  his 
vest  or  the  state  of  his  heart.  The  practical 
joker  or  the  genial  drunk  usually  found  himself 
paying  for  the  follies  of  his  wagging  tongue 
under  the  duelling  oaks.  Many  young  men  set- 
tled these  little  matters  of  honour  with  their 
lives.  One  fire-eating  member  of  Congress 
fought  eighteen  duels  in  defence  of  his  opinions, 
and  we  wonder,  in  retrospect,  whether  they 
could  have  been  worth  defending!  They  fought 
for  excitement,  for  sport,  and  for  exercise,  ap- 
parently, for  scarcely  a  morning  passed  that 
there  were  not  one  or  two  meetings  under  the 
duelling  oaks,  and  it  is  an  historical  fact  that 
ten  duels  were  fought  there  one  Sunday  morn- 
ing between  dawn  and  the  breakfast  hour!  They 
quarrelled  over  nothing  at  all  and  battled  like 
demons  with  sword  and  pistol  in  defence  of 
what  seems  to  us  a  supersensitive  honour.  And 
sometimes  the  result  was  tragic  and  ended  in  a 
young  life  snuffed  out  and  another  young  life 
embittered,  and  sometimes  it  was  ludicrous. 
[279] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

Bernard  Marigny,  who  was  a  famous  wit, 
wagged  his  barbed  tongue  once  too  often  in  the 
presence  of  the  exquisite  Monsieur  Tissier,  the 
Beau  Brummel  of  New  Orleans.  For  a  long 
time,  the  story  goes,  Monsieur  Tissier  had  en- 
dured Marigny's  exaggerated  and  probably  of- 
fensive greetings.  "Ah,  Monsieur  Tissier," 
Marigny  would  exclaim  whenever  he  encoun- 
tered the  fashionable  young  man,  "what  a  beau 
you  are!  How  I  admire  you!  How  deeply, 
how  profoundly,  how  utterly  I  admire  you!" 
This  sort  of  thing  is  hard  to  bear.  Tissier  lost 
his  temper  finally  and  challenged  the  wit  to  a 
duel.  They  met  (probably  at  dawn  when  the 
beau  was  not  looking  his  best)  under  the  famous 
oaks  in  the  City  Park.  Marigny  faced  his  furi- 
ous opponent  seriously  and  said,  in  a  tragic 
voice,  "What  a  delightful  fellow  you  are !  Must 
I  really  deprive  the  world  of  the  incomparable 
Beau  Tissier?"  Tissier,  to  his  everlasting  credit, 
burst  into  laughter  and  the  duel  was  called  off. 

To-day  the  old  duelling  oaks  afford  a  pleasant 
circle  of  shade  in  the  wide-spreading  fields  and 
clipped  lawns  of  a  public  park.  What  used  to 
be  Louis  Allard's  plantation  has  become  a  mas- 
terpiece of  landscape  gardening,  an  exquisite 
realisation  of  a  Watteau  background.  If  Louis 
Allard  could  leave  his  grave  under  the  oaks  and 

[280] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

see  the  classic  peristyle  where  his  sugar  cane 
used  to  grow,  he  would  not  believe  his  eyes. 
Poor  Allard  wrote  verses  and  had  so  little  busi- 
ness sense  in  his  poetic  head  that  when  he  died 
nothing  belonged  to  him  of  his  plantation  save 
the  scant  six  feet  of  his  grave.  But  that  was 
dearly  beloved  earth,  and  Louis  Allard  probably 
lay  down  in  it  contentedly.  His  oaks  are  still 
alive,  inconceivably  gnarled  and  wrapped  in 
moss.  But  where  his  neglected  cotton  and  indigo 
grew  there  are  velvety  golf  links  and  smooth 
polo  fields;  and  where  the  sandy,  deeply  rutted, 
ambling  roads  used  to  be,  there  are  boulevards 
bordered  with  palms  and  purring  motors  pursu- 
ing each  other  in  an  endless  game  of  tag.  No, 
Louis  Allard,  you  had  best  not  leave  your  little 
grave  under  the  oaks!  It  is  your  own,  and  there 
is  poetry  in  the  dense  branches  overhead,  a  faint 
fragrance  of  the  old  New  Orleans,  dreams  of  a 
romantic  and  vanished  past.  .  .  . 

There  were  pleasures  I  could  not  share.  The 
dweller  in  New  Orleans  introduced  Allan  to 
gin  fizzes  as  they  are  concocted  at  Ramos's  and 
to  a  certain  cocktail  at  Sazerac's  which  almost 
persuaded  Allan  to  settle  down  in  the  Creole 
City  for  life. 

But  all  the  while  we  were  not  permitted  to 
cross  Canal  Street;  the  dweller  in  New  Orleans 

[281] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

kept  us  away  from  the  vieux  carre,  and  we  dined 
at  the  St.  Charles  or  in  the  Forest  Grill  at  the 
Grunewald  in  an  atmosphere  which  might  have 
been  bottled  in  New  York  or  Chicago,  labelled 
Broadway  or  Michigan  Avenue  and  shipped 
to  New  Orleans  for  tourist  consumption.  It  was 
the  height  of  the  racing  season  and  the  big 
Grunewald  was  crowded.  All  day  long,  and 
apparently  most  of  the  night,  the  track  habitues 
filled  the  lobby.  Getting  from  the  front  door 
to  the  elevators  was  a  blighting  business.  The 
close-packed  mob  of  men,  most  of  them  having 
that  acute  forward  curve  of  the  eye  which 
George  Randolph  Chester  attributes  to  a  life- 
long study  of  the  "shell  and  bean  trick,"  had  to 
be  charged  head  down.  The  Grunewald  was 
already  "booked  up"  for  the  Carnival  season, 
and  prices  had  begun  to  soar  in  anticipation  of 
the  week  of  gaiety  which  began,  in  191 7,  on  the 
twentieth  of  February  and  continued  in  a  mad 
crescendo  of  pleasure  until  Fat  Tuesday,  Mardi 
Gras  of  the  Latins. 

Carnival,  or  carne  vale,  has  lost  its  meaning 
as  an  English  word,  for  carnival  is  literally  the 
"farewell  to  flesh"  before  the  sober  denials  of 
Lent.  The  good-bye  is  a  long  one  in  New  Or- 
leans, the  gay  city  putting  off  the  inevitable  dis- 
cipline with  six  days  of  mad  excitement — street 

[282] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

parades,  balls,  masked  frolics  and  public  and 
private  entertainments  of  all  sorts.  And  since 
New  Orleans  has  to  care  for  as  many  as  fifty 
thousand  visitors,  it  requires  an  ambassador's 
diplomacy  or  an  inflated  pocket-book  or  both  to 
engage  rooms  at  any  of  the  hotels  during  Carni- 
val. You  are  a  lucky  tourist  indeed  if  at  the 
eleventh  hour  you  are  given  a  square  inch  and  a 
pillow — not  that  you  will  need  the  pillow  at  all 
during  Carnival  week  except  for  an  early  morn- 
ing recuperation!  They  tell  the  story  in  New 
Orleans  of  the  hotel  guest  who  sauntered  up  to 
the  desk  at  noon  and,  stifling  a  yawn,  asked  for 
his  mail. 

"D.  Jones,"  said  he. 

"Room  number,  please?"  the  harassed  clerk 
enquired. 

"Bathroom  Z,"  replied  the  cheerful  reveller, 
surrendering  his  key. 

It  takes  more  than  a  bed  in  a  bathtub  to  de- 
press the  Carnival  tourist.  He  enjoys  himself. 
And  because  New  Orleans  is  first  and  last  a 
Latin  city,  she  sees  to  it  that  he  enjoys  himself 
in  the  New  Orleans  way.  For  Carnival  in  New 
Orleans  is  the  very  spirit  of  gaiety,  a  grotesque 
madness,  a  delightful  joke — it  is  never,  never  an 
affair  of  confetti  and  vulgarity.  It  takes  the 
true  soul  of  fun  to  put  on  a  mask  and  romp  in 

[283] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

public,  and  in  New  Orleans  one  sees  that  rare 
social  talent  en  masse,  a.  whole  population  bent 
on  fun  and  getting  it  without  once  offending 
good  taste  or  self-control.  There  are  not  many 
cities  in  the  world  where  such  a  thing  would  be 
possible.  It  would  not  be  possible  in  New  York 
— if  you  have  ever  scratched,  clawed  and  battled 
your  way  through  a  New  Year's  Eve  crowd  on 
Broadway  you  will  know  why.  It  was  not  pos- 
sible in  Munich  even  in  those  ante-strafing  days 
of  Bavarian  revelry.  It  would  not  be  possible 
in  London.  But  in  Vienna — Wien,  the  rogue! — 
it  always  has  been  possible  for  there  you  find  the 
light  touch,  the  inestimable  gift  of  gaiety.  In 
Florence,  in  Rome,  in  all  the  hill  towns  of  Italy 
you  may  romp  streetwards,  if  you  choose,  in  a 
domino,  an  incandescent  nose  and  a  musical 
shirt-bosom,  and  meet  nothing  more  offensive 
than  a  tickling  feather  and  a  compliment.  So 
it  is  in  New  Orleans. 

The  fun  begins  with  the  parade  of  the  knights 
of  Momus,  one  of  the  four  leading  Carnival 
societies  responsible  for  the  decorated  floats  and 
the  elaborate  street  pageants  that  have  meant 
so  much  in  the  life  of  the  city  since  1827.  Rex, 
Comus  and  Proteus  follow  in  lively  procession. 
Canal  Street  is  a  seething  river  of  people.  The 
huge  floats,  like  gilded  and  frosted  sugar-cake 

[284] 


m 


YOU  REMEMBER  JIM  BLUDSO,  DON'T  YOU.''      ILL  SHOW 
YOU  HIS  WORLD 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

nightmares,  trundle  in  comic  magnificence 
through  the  crowds.  There  are  monstrous 
swans,  bloated  dragons,  castles,  suns,  caverns, 
giants.  Angels  with  crepey  hair  balance  on 
swollen  clouds  blowing  gilded  trumpets; 
bearded  Neptunes  brandish  tridents,  clowns 
gambol  and  grin.  There  are  toad-faced  men 
and  dwarfs,  gnomes,  kings  and  queens  in  ermine 
and  rhinestones.  It  is  amazingly  gay  and  gro- 
tesque; the  people  pack  the  streets  all  day; 
crowds  pour  in  from  the  neighbouring  cities  and 
towns,  the  restaurants  are  busier  than  ever,  and 
there  are  Carnival  balls  every  night  where  you 
may  dance  until  dawn  and  start  another  day 
without  having  gone  to  your  fabulously  expen- 
sive hall  bedroom  at  all! 

The  dweller  in  New  Orleans  seemed  to  fear 
that  we  would  take  the  Carnival  too  seriously. 
He  deprecated  the  week's  frivolity  as  if  he  were 
apologising  for  some  hereditary  weakness.  And 
before  we  could  discover  why  a  serious  business 
woman  should  spend-  a  fortune  on  tinsel  trap- 
pings once  a  year,  the  dweller  in  New  Orleans 
:hanged  the  subject.  He  uttered  the  magic  word 
"Panama,"  which  is  a  sort  of  industrial  kismet 
in  the  Crescent  City,  an  Open  Sesame  to  the  in- 
most heart  of  American  New  Orleans. 

"I  will  show  you,"  he  said,  "what  we  are  do- 

[285] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

ing  to  prepare  ourselves  for  the  trade  that  is 
bound  to  come  through  the  Panama  Canal  after 
the  war.  Commerce  must  some  day  return  to 
its  normal  activity.  When  it  does,  New  Orleans 
will  be  ready  for  it.  She  owns  most  of  her 
water-front  property;  she  is  improving  her  rail- 
way facilities;  she  is  putting  a  short-cut  through 
to  Lake  Pontchartrain  from  the  Mississippi; 
she  is  going  to  be  exceptionally  nice  to  large 
steamers  from  all  over  the  world,  so  that  if  they 
come  once  they  will  come  again!  What  are  you 
going  to  do  about  it,  you  New  Yorkers?  Pres- 
ently New  Orleans  will  be  written  large  on  the 
industrial  map  of  the  world;  she  will  stand 
shoulder  to  shoulder  with  Liverpool,  Hamburg, 
Rotterdam  and  London!" 

The  dweller  in  New  Orleans,  with  a  fanatic 
gleam  in  his  eyes,  seized  his  hat  and  beckoned 
to  us. 

"Come!  I'll  show  you  some  wonderful 
things.  I'll  show  you  the  great  Mississippi  roll- 
ing down  to  the  Gulf  between  the  high  levees, 
bringing  grain  from  the  Middle  West  and  cot- 
ton from  the  whole  Mississippi  Valley.  I'll 
show  you  where  the  famous  river  steamers, 
loaded  to  their  hurricane  decks  with  bales  of  cot- 
ton, used  to  wait  six  or  eight  deep  at  the  wharves. 
Fifty  years  ago  they  came  into  New  Orleans  one 

[286] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

after  the  other,  bursting  their  steam  lungs  to 
make  and  to  break  speed  records.  They  brought 
rich  planters  from  up  the  river,  gamblers,  slaves, 
immigrants,  riff-raff  and  rich  gentry  coming 
down  to  New  Orleans  for  a  holiday.  You  re- 
member Jim  Bludso,  don't  you?  I'll  show  you 
his  world — a  vastly  changed  world  since  Jim 
Bludso's  day,  for  there  aren't  any  tumble-down 
wharves  and  jetties  left,  and  the  river  steamers, 
like  old  Jim  himself,  have  disappeared — gone, 
we  hope,  to  some  river  Paradise  of  their  own. 
I'll  show  you  miles  of  city-owned  docks  and  a 
cotton  warehouse  that  covers  a  hundred  acres, 
where  machinery  does  the  work  of  slaves  and 
lifts,  sorts,  loads  and  unloads  two  million  bales 
of  cotton  a  year.  What  would  Bludso  say  to 
that,  eh?  I'll  show  you  grain  elevators,  banana 
wharves  and  coffee  wharves,  ships  loading  and 
ships  unloading — you'll  hear  every  language 
under  the  sun — even  German  if  you  venture 
near  the  interned  ships.  And  if  you  don't  say 
that  New  Orleans  is  New  York's  most  danger- 
ous rival,"  he  said,  wagging  his  finger  under 
our  astonished  noses,  "I'll  eat  my  hat!" 

We  didn't  want  him  to  eat  his  hat,  and  we 
knew  his  spirit  well  enough  to  be  certain  that  if 
we  didn't  indulge  in  superlatives  he  would  eat 
it  crown,  brim  and  all.     So  we  followed  him 

[287] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

to  the  water-front  and  saw  the  resistless  Missis- 
sippi—  (what  a  happy  name  it  is!  It  rolls  and 
hisses  like  the  yellow  stream  itself!) — caged  be- 
tween the  levees  and  snarling  at  the  city  it  has 
inundated  so  many  times.  We  spent  hours  in 
the  steel  and  concrete  warehouses  and  gazed 
lovingly  at  big  ships  lying  like  passive  Prome- 
theuses  while  the  giant  claws  of  snorting  der- 
ricks dived  into  their  vitals.  We  were  deafened 
by  the  rattle  and  clamour  of  commerce.  We 
saw  New  Orleans,  capable,  canny  New  Orleans, 
sitting  in  her  comfortable  front  parlour  waiting 
for  the  ships  that  are  bound  to  come  up  from 
Panama  after  the  war.  Watch  out,  New  York, 
for  your  Creole  rival!  She  may  have  ink- 
stained  fingers  and  soot-grimed  cheeks,  but  she 
is  clever,  she  is  capable,  she  is  far-sighted 
and — 

"I  know  she  leads  a  double  life,"  I  whispered 
to  Allan,  as  we  came  out  into  Canal  Street 
again. 

"Who,  for  goodness'  sake?"  Allan  demanded, 
looking  startled. 

"New  Orleans.  I  have  heard  that  she  is 
French  and  dangerous  and  alluring.  Let's  run 
away  from  the  dweller  in  New  Orleans  and  find 
out  for  ourselves." 

[288] 


CHAPTER  XI 

CREOLES,   PRALINES  AND  A  LITTLE  HISTORY 


O  at  Royal  Street  we  excused  ourselves 
and  ran  like  two  children  into  the 
vieux  carre.  For  you  know  that 
Canal  Street  divides  New  Orleans  in 
two,  just  as  the  Danube  divides  Buda  from 
Pesth,  just  as  the  Seine  divides  the  Paris  of  to- 
day from  the  Paris  of  Montmartre  and  yester- 
day, just  as  the  Thames  divides  London,  and 
the  Arno  Florence  and  the  Tiber  Rome.  On 
the  right  side  of  Canal  Street  as  you  face  the 
river  lies  the  American  city,  bristling  with 
energy  and  ambition,  noise  and  electric  lights, 
shops,  Movie  theatres,  banks,  tourist  offices,  sky- 
scrapers and  street  cars;  on  the  left  is  the  old 
city,  the  most  completely  foreign  place  in  the 
United  States,  where  the  width  of  the  streets, 
the  paving  stones,  the  architecture,  the  people, 
and  even  human  voices  are  utterly  different  and 
alien  and  arresting  and  unforgettable.  You 
leave  the  tawdry  crowd  in  Canal   Street  and 

[289] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

plunge  into  a  world  of  soft-spoken  people;  you 
leave  modern  department  stores  and  come  upon 
curiosity  shops  that  would  have  delighted  Ana- 
tole  France,  dim  and  musty  places  filled  with 
the  spoils  of  all  that  magnificence  which  centred 
about  the  Place  d'Armes.  The  windows  are  full 
of  odds  and  ends  of  bronze  and  china,  crystal 
and  tarnished  silver,  and  little  trays,  full  of  old- 
fashioned  jewelry — hoop  earrings,  monstrous 
bracelets  set  with  cameos,  necklaces  of  Etruscan 
gold,  fat  watches  that  must  have  ticked  in  the 
pockets  of  embroidered  waistcoats,  signet  rings 
and  seals.  We  stopped  every  now  and  then  to 
wander  into  the  dim  and  dusty  places,  making 
believe  that  we  could  afTord  to  buy  some  rare 
bit  of  Sevres  "only  slightly  cracked,  as  you  see, 
Madame,"  just  for  the  pleasure  of  watching  the 
antiquarian  take  the  piece  in  his  hands,  blow 
off  the  accumulation  of  dust  and  whisper,  in  an 
ingratiating  voice,  a  price  that  would  have  stag- 
gered a  Morgan.  I  have  a  passion  for  long 
earrings  which  Allan  says  is  due  to  my  ungrati- 
fied  longing  to  be  a  movie-vampire.  I  don't 
look  at  all  like  a  vampire — to  tell  the  truth, 
after  making  a  hurried  trip  to  the  looking-glass, 
I  don't  believe  I  can  describe  myself  at  all.  And, 
as  far  as  I  can  remember,  my  friends  have  only 
made  two  attempts  to  do  it  for  me.  Usually 
[290] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

people  approach  me  with  a  Samaritan  gleam  in 
their  eyes  and  prepare  me  for  the  worst  by  say- 
ing in  a  soothing  voice,  "I  am  going  to  tell  you 
something  for  your  own  good,  my  dear,"  which 
always  prefaces  something  utterly  nasty  and 
hard  to  bear.  I  brace  myself  and  hear  the  truth. 
But  on  two  memorable  occasions  the  formula 
was  varied.  "I  am  going  to  tell  you  something 
nice,  my  dear,"  was  followed  by  the  announce- 
ment that  Percy  B.  Shelley  and  I  looked  enough 
alike  to  be  twins,  and  that  I  was  the  dead,  breath- 
ing image,  whatever  that  means,  of  George 
Eliot!  I  struggled  under  the  shame  of  it  for 
years,  and  might  never  have  recovered  my 
self-respect  at  all  if  it  had  not  been  restored 
to  me  by  a  shop-girl.  This  is  how  it  hap- 
pened. She  had  been  staring  at  me  with  such 
fixed  attention  that  she  had  stopped  chewing 
gum. 

"Good  Lord,"  I  thought,  "does  she  think  I 
am  Mark  Twain?" 

Apparently  not.  She  nudged  her  neighbour 
shop-girl  and  I  heard  her  hoarse  whisper,  "Seen 
her  in  the  movies?" 

"Naw,"  said  the  other,  staring,  too.  "The 
one  with  the  earrings?" 

"Yeh.    Ain't  you  seen  her  in  the  movies?" 

"Naw.    Whatcher  call  her?" 
[291] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

"Edith  Storey,"  declared  the  blessed  restorer 
of  my  self-respect.  "She's  some  swell  little 
emoter." 

Edith  Storey!  I  rose  in  my  own  esteem.  I 
hugged  myself.     I  was  born  again. 

But  where  were  we?  Trying  on  earrings  in 
a  New  Orleans  curiosity  shop  in  Royal  Street — 
the  Rue  Royal  which  can't  be  pronounced  save 
by  a  true  Parisian,  a  cockney  of  the  boulevards. 
Try  it  and  see! 

I  dangled  a  large  cluster  of  golden  and  ame- 
thyst grapes  against  my  cheeks  and  peered  into 
a  cracked  mirror  while  Allan,  with  his  chin 
tucked  into  his  collar  and  a  capitalist's  manner, 
priced  Napoleonic  escritoires  and  Wedgewood 
plates.  I  tried  another  pair  made  of  coral, 
fringed  with  Etruscan  gold,  and  asked  Allan, 
as  I  turned  my  head  this  way  and  that,  "D'  you 
like  them  at  all?" 

Allan  tore  himself  away  from  the  impassioned 
salesman  and  examined  me  critically.  "You 
would  need  a  Madame  Bovary  velvet  gown  with 
a  square  train  to  wear  earrings  like  that,"  he 
decided.  "And  vou  are  too  young  to  wear  vel- 
vet" 

It  was  a  triumph  of  diplomacy.  I  bought  a 
pair  of  light  hoops  very  delicately  made  and 
altogether  sub-deb  and  frivolous.     It  saved  us 

[292] 


THIS  IS  THE  REAL  NEW  ORLEANS  ! 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

from  an  ignominous  retreat  at  least,  but  I  put 
the  Madame  Bovary  corals  back  in  their  tray 
reluctantly  with  a  sigh  for  the  vanished  picture 
of  myself  in  a  velvet  gown  with  a  square 
train.  .  .  . 

Out  in  Royal  Street  again  we  shouted  aloud. 

"This  is  the  real  New  Orleans!  We  are  find- 
ing her  out.  She  has  put  aside  her  sailor  hat 
and  her  tailored  suit  and  has  slipped  into  a 
ruffled  dressing  gown,  an  untidy  dressing  gown 
a  little  too  long  in  the  back.  She  has  put  her 
pretty  bare  feet  into  slippers  and  has  clasped  a 
string  of  pearls  around  her  neck.  She  is  at  home 
again,  in  her  shabby,  dusty  old  house  full  of 
beautiful  things.  She  is  lazy  and  sensuous  and 
mysterious  and  provoking.  She  hums  little 
Creole  songs:  //  va  partir  et  n'a  pas  vue  mes 
larmes  or  Pauvre  piti'  Mamsel  Zizi.  She  may, 
oh,  she  may  ask  us  to  supper.  .  .  ." 

And  of  course  she  did.  She  explained,  not 
apologetically,  but  sadly,  that  her  most  famous 
chefs  were  dead.  Boudro,  Moreau,  Antoine 
Alciatore  pere,  the  elder  Madame  Begue,  fa- 
mous cooks  of  another  generation,  could  not  be 
there  to  serve  us.  But  we  could  still  have  an 
amazing  breakfast  at  Begue's  if  we  should  stop 
there  any  morning  at  eleven  o'clock.  Galatoire's 
was  excellent.    Or  we  could  go  to  Antoine's  in 

[293] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

St.  Louis  Street  or  to  the  Louisiane  in  Iberville 
Street.  Alciatore  pere  bequeathed  his  secrets 
to  his  two  sons,  Jules  and  Fernand;  one  is  in 
charge  of  Antoine's,  the  other  of  the  Louisiane, 
and  it  is  a  toss-up  which  of  the  two  is  the  best 
restaurant.  The  Louisiane  has  been  garnished 
and  brightened  recently,  and  both  of  the  old 
cafes  have  done  away  with  the  characteristic 
sanded  floors  of  the  past.  Of  the  two  places, 
Antoine's  is  the  simpler  and  Jules  presides  in 
the  kitchen.  The  Louisiane  has  surrendered  to 
the  dancing  onslaught,  and  an  excited  little 
waiter  proudly  showed  us  a  large  room  with  a 
polished  floor  which  has  been  set  aside  for  those 
fox-trotters  and  one-steppers  who  have  so  little 
reverence  of  the  masterpieces  of  Alciatore  fils 
that  they  will  dance  between  mouthfuls. 

It  was  at  the  Louisiane  that  we  met  the  lover 
of  New  Orleans.  He  was  sitting  at  a  table  not 
far  from  us,  hidden  behind  a  copy  of  Le  Rire 
three  months  old,  just  as  we  had  left  him  five 
years  before  in  Paris.  We  had  parted  from  him 
then,  after  a  month  spent  pleasantly  together  in 
exploring  the  "other  bank  of  the  Seine,"  at  a 
little  restaurant  in  the  Rue  des  Saints  Peres 
where  we  had  stopped  to  drink  to  our  next  meet- 
ing. 

"You  must  come  to  New  Orleans  some  day," 

[294] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

he  had  said.  "I  expect  to  go  back  there  next 
year  or  the  year  after.    You  will  like  it." 

We  had  promised  and  had  left  him,  little 
thinking  that  the  mysterious  threads  of  our  com- 
plex destinies  were  to  draw  us  back  to  America 
and  southward  to  New  Orleans  and  into  the 
Louisiane;  little  thinking  that  our  friend's  des- 
tiny would  lie  towards  the  Marne  and  that  it 
would  lead  him  into  battle  for  France  and  up  to 
the  gates  of  death  and  then  mysteriously  back 
again  into  delectable  life.  .  .  . 

He  heard  our  voices  and  lowered  Le  Rire  to 
stare  at  us.  And  it  was  as  if  five  years  had 
evaporated  into  thin  air  with  all  their  anxieties 
and  anguish,  pleasures  and  loves,  and  we  were 
back  at  the  start  again — three  young  pairs  of 
eyes  looking  at  an  untarnished  and  romantic 
world. 

"So  you  have  come  to  New  Orleans  after  all," 
he  said. 

And  then  there  was  bedlam!  The  Louisiane, 
from  Fernand  to  Fernand  fils,  from  the  cashier 
to  the  oldest  waiter,  joined  in  the  reunion. 

"I've  come  to  sit  at  the  knees  of  my  first  god- 
dess," he  told  us.  "I  can't  fight  for  her  because 
there  is  a  piece  of  German  shrapnel  waltzing 
around  my  anatomy  and  blighting  my  locomo- 
tive powers — but  I  can  love  her.    Paris  has  my 

[295] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

soul,  but  New  Orleans  has  my  heart.  I  am  a 
good  Creole." 

We  toasted  his  sweetheart  in  absinthe,  a  little 
pale  green  drink  flavoured  delicately  with  par- 
egoric, so  insidious  that  where  you  should  take 
one  you  take  two — and  so  on.  We  went  all  the 
way  to  the  old  Absinthe  House  over  on  Bour- 
bon Street,  so  that  we  might  pledge  on  historic 
pledging  ground.  But  when  we  knocked  at  the 
door  a  very  polite  and  positive  fellow  in  a  tweed 
cap  opened  it  an  inch  or  two  and  whispered, 
"Very  pleased  to  serve  the  two  gentlemen.  But 
I  can't  serve  the  lady.  The  lid  is  on."  And 
then  shut  the  door  in  our  faces. 

So  we  had  to  turn  away  from  the  famous  old 
place,  where  at  one  time  I  could  have  toasted 
New  Orleans  in  a  true  Parisian  mixture  of  Me- 
lissa and  Fennel,  Anise  and  Hyssop,  the  absinthe 
frappee  of  delectable  memory.  We  went  back 
to  the  Louisiane  and  pledged  our  hostess  in 
Spanish  absinthe  before  the  first  course  of  our 
supper  was  served. 

I  don't  know  whether  Allan  and  the  lover  of 
New  Orleans  noticed  it,  but  absinthe  is  not  my 
habitual  beverage  and  I  sank  back  almost  at 
once  into  an  abyss  of  strange  mental  mists  where 
I  was  acutely  conscious  of  the  dining-room,  the 
smiling  and  paternal  waiter,  the  chattering  din- 
[296] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

ers  and,  before  me,  a  plate  of  baked  oysters — 
acutely  conscious  and  at  the  same  time  irrepara- 
bly divided,  set  aside  like  a  lost  soul  behind  a 
transparent  and  imprisoning  veil.  It  was  an 
atrocious  nightmare.  But  I  must  have  acquitted 
myself  well,  for  Allan  asked  me  if  I  would  like 
another  absinthe.  Another!  I  rose  slowly  out 
of  the  numbing  languor  to  shake  my  head,  and 
then  sank  again  like  a  pebble  falling  to  the  bot- 
tom of  a  deep  pool. 

The  appalling  thing  passed  as  quickly  as  it 
had  come;  the  veil  was  whisked  away  and  I 
heard  the  rattle  of  dishes  and  the  clamour  of 
voices  distinctly  again.  I  pushed  the  little  glass 
of  pale  green  froth  across  the  table  with  a  shud- 
der and  speared  one  of  the  divine  oysters.  An- 
other?    Rather  not! 

Day  after  day  we  dined  at  the  Louisiane  or 
at  Antoine's,  so  that  with  our  devotion  we  won 
smiles  from  the  Alciatore  family,  from  Jules 
and  Fernand  and  his  son  and  from  old  Madame 
Alciatore,  who  was  the  wife  of  Antoine  pere  and 
who  still  sits  enthroned  behind  the  cause  and 
makes  change  nimbly  and  unceasingly.  I  should 
like  to  tell  you  of  all  the  delicious  things  we 
had  to  eat,  for  the  dishes  of  the  two  Alciatore 
brothers  deserve  the  praise  one  would  give  a 
work  of  art.  I  remember  the  gumbo  a  la  Creole, 
[297] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

of  course,  for  that  is  first  and  last  a  New  Orleans 
delicacy;  I  remember  the  bouillabaisse,  the  hot 
breads,  the  bisque  of  crayfish  a  la  Cardinal,  and 
pompano  en  Papillate;  I  remember  oysters  dis- 
guised and  oysters  glorified,  and  tomatoes  puree 
that  would  have  melted  in  the  mouth  of  a  snow 
man,  and  salads  that  might  have  been  sent  on  a 
magic  carpet  from  Paoli's  in  Florence,  duck 
pressed  a  la  Tour  a" Argent,  brulot  and  adorable 
little  pastries  meant  only  for  gods  and  goddesses, 
not  for  hungry  mortals. 

The  secret  of  it  all?  Who  knows!  What  is 
the  secret  behind  a  Tintoretto  or  a  beautiful 
gown  or  a  Strauss  song?  A  little  pepper,  a  little 
skill  and  much  art.  When  the  famous  Cafe 
Brulot  Diabolique  is  served  at  Antoine's,  the 
lights  are  lowered  in  the  restaurant.  The  serv- 
ing of  such  a  coffee  becomes,  appropriately,  a 
rite,  and  it  is  a  solemn  moment  when  the  silver 
bowls,  ablaze  with  burning  cognac,  make  their 
appearance  in  the  crowded  cafe.  Strangely, 
since  we  claim  to  love  freedom,  it  is  ceremony 
and  not  license  which  appeals  most  strongly  to 
our  heart  of  hearts! 

From  the  moment  of  our  first  discovery,  the 
vieux  carre  claimed  us  every  day.  The  sixty 
squares  of  the  original  city  still  enclose  all  that 
is  most  appealing  of   romantic  New  Orleans. 

[298] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

Few  changes  have  been  made  in  it,  and  it  speaks 
well  for  the  taste  and  veneration  of  modern  New 
Orleans  that  the  characteristic  balconied  houses 
built  of  adobe  and  stuccoed  brick  have  not  been 
interfered  with.  The  city  which  rose  out  of 
the  destructive  fire  of  1794  looks  very  much  as 
it  did  over  a  hundred  years  ago.  The  doors  are 
flush  with  the  street  and  the  houses  are  built  in 
the  Spanish  fashion  to  enclose  an  inner  court. 
The  tinted  and  peeling  walls  are  so  varied  in 
surface  and  colour  that  one  is  led  from  corner 
to  corner  in  pursuit  of  the  picturesque,  now  at- 
tracted by  the  high-piled  iron  balconies  or  the 
dormer  windows  or  the  quaint  chimney  pots 
of  some  delightful  old  house,  now  lured  by  a 
glimpse  of  weed-grown  gardens.  It  is  quite 
true  that  the  quarter  has  been  given  over  in  part 
to  Italians  from  the  bassa  Italia  and  to  negroes. 
But  a  few  Creoles  still  cling  to  their  city;  I 
have  heard  their  soft  voices  and  ingratiating 
patois  everywhere  in  the  streets. 

What  the  racial  status  of  the  Creole  really  is 
has  been  misunderstood,  if  not  generally,  at  least 
by  a  great  enough  number  of  people  to  warrant 
an  explanation  of  the  matter  here.  A  Creole  is 
a  person  of  mixed  Spanish  and  French  blood, 
a  native  of  New  Orleans,  and  not,  as  is  occa- 
sionally supposed,  a  French  or  a  Spanish  mu- 
[299] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

latto.  The  octoroons  and  quadroons,  who  played 
such  a  sinister  part  in  the  story  of  the  city,  have 
been  confused,  perhaps  not  unnaturally,  with 
the  Creoles.  The  social  distinction  between  the 
two  was  not  only  desirable  but  necessary.  To- 
wards the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
New  Orleans  had  begun  to  recover  from  the 
effects  of  an  unstable  and  adventurous  history, 
the  idle,  spendthrift,  profligate  young  men  of 
the  town  dangled  at  the  heels  of  the  pretty  yel- 
low women  who  came  from  Jamaica,  Santa 
Domingo  and  the  French  West  Indies.  These 
women  were  often  amazingly  beautiful;  there 
was  just  enough  white  blood  in  their  veins  to 
make  them  conspicuously  unlike  negresses,  and 
they  were  a  danger  to  the  social  life  of  New 
Orleans.  They  dressed  in  the  height  of  fashion, 
established  themselves  luxuriously  and  flaunted 
their  mulatto  loveliness  under  the  outraged 
noses  of  the  Creole  matrons. 

There  are  terrible  stories  of  the  wild,  utterly 
abandoned  orgies  that  took  place  during  the 
famous  quadroon  balls  of  the  period.  The  ball- 
room was  in  a  building  in  Orleans  Street  near 
the  little  gardens  of  St.  Anthony's  Close,  and  it 
is  said  that  white  men  fought  duels  in  the  Close 
over  the  yellow  sirens.  An  order  of  coloured 
nuns  has  turned  the  dance-hall  into  a  convent, 

[300] 


STUCCOED    BRICK    WALLS,    ARCADES    AND    COOL    INNER 
COURTS 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

but  no  number  of  litanies  and  candles,  tears  and 
prayers  can  make  the  place  anything  but  tragi- 
cally suggestive  of  that  unmoral  and  degenerate 
society.  The  alluring  quadroons  might  have 
disrupted  the  social  life  of  New  Orleans  if  the 
law  had  not  finally  forced  all  women  of  negro 
blood  to  wear  the  tignon,  the  distinguishing  ban- 
dana headdress  which  branded  the  wearer  as 
conspicuously  and  perhaps  as  tragically  as  Hes- 
ter Pryne's  scarlet  letter. 

But  if  you  would  know  more  about  the  quad- 
roons, read  Cable's  "Old  Creole  Days."  Ma- 
dame John's  house  is  in  Dumaine  Street — a  two- 
story  house  deeply  balconied,  as  forlorn  and 
dilapidated  as  a  house  can  be;  the  shutters  are 
closed,  the  pillars  of  the  balcony  lean  drunkenly, 
the  whole  place  totters  as  if  a  slight  push  would 
send  it  crashing  down. 

Cable  is  not  the  only  "literary  memory"  of 
New  Orleans.  Alcee  Fortier  and  Gayarre,  in 
their  histories  of  Louisiana,  told  the  exciting 
story  of  the  Crescent  City  as  well  as  it  could  be 
told,  although  there  is  a  more  recent  book  by 
Miss  Grace  King,  "New  Orleans,  the  Place  and 
the  People,"  that  reads  like  a  novel  and  has  the 
double  advantage  of  being  perfectly  true.  Laf- 
cadio  Hearn,  the  myopic  Greek-Oriental-Irish- 
American,  who  saw  life  and  people  and  things 

[301] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

dimly  and  vested  them  with  his  own  amazing 
imagination,  lived  a  part  of  his  life  in  New 
Orleans.  He  knew  every  street  and  courtyard 
in  the  vieux  carve,  and  he  collected  some  of  the 
most  amusing  of  the  Creole  proverbs  and  called 
the  little  book  "Gombo  Zebes."  His  best  story, 
"Chita,"  was  written  about  the  wild  country  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  and  the  hurricane 
that  destroyed  Last  Island  in  1856.  "Chita," 
like  Conrad's  "Typhoon,"  is  a  hair-raising  pic- 
ture of  nature  on  the  rampage,  nature  let  loose 
and  furious,  implacable,  terrifying  and  unen- 
durable. After  reading  it  I  had  no  desire  to 
go  to  Grand  Isle,  the  pirate  La  Fine's  stamping 
ground.  Byron  chose  that  adorable  buccaneer 
for  the  hero  of  his  "Corsair,"  and  I  ought  to 
have  been  willing  to  pursue  such  literary  treas- 
ure to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  But  when  we  were 
in  New  Orleans  the  weather  was  erratic;  it  was 
alternately  as  cold  as  Burlington,  Vermont,  and 
as  hot  as  Bay  Head,  New  Jersey.  And  since 
Grand  Isle  is  occasionally  blown  to  ribbons  in 
the  teeth  of  the  devouring  hurricanes  that  sweep 
across  the  Gulf,  I  fought  shy  of  going  there. 

La  Fitte  was  a  magnificent  fellow,  a  pirate 
with  the  "grand  manner"  and  surely  no  worse  a 
villain  than  the  submarine  commanders  of  to- 
day.   He  called  himself  a  privateer,  and  if  he 

[302] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

attacked  and  robbed  English  merchantmen  he 
explained  that  he  was  privileged,  as  a  bearer  of 
letters  of  marque  from  the  Republic  of  Cartha- 
gena,  to  plunder  enemy  ships.  This  has  a  fa- 
miliar sound  to  our  modern  ears,  accustomed  to 
the  excuses  and  self-justifications  of  U-boat 
pirates! 

The  legend  of  La  Fitte  has  taken  on  romance 
with  time,  and  New  Orleans  is  rather  proud  of 
him  to-day.  They  show  you  the  site  of  his  little 
blacksmith  shop  at  the  corner  of  Chartres  and 
St.  Philip  Streets,  where  he  is  supposed  to  have 
wrought  a  great  many  of  the  beautiful  iron 
railings  and  balustrades  in  the  old  city  before 
he  "hit  the  trail"  to  piracy  and  fame.  Like  so 
many  of  those  historical  criminals  whom  we 
have  learned  to  admire  by  simply  sitting  cosily 
in  our  library  and  shuddering  at  their  fearless- 
ness, La  Fitte  had  his  own  sense  of  honour.  The 
British  had  so  great  a  respect  for  his  ability  that 
when  they  were  getting  ready  to  attack  New 
Orleans  in  1814,  they  tried  to  win  La  Fitte  over 
to  their  side.  Whereupon  the  bold  freebooter 
rushed  back  to  New  Orleans  and  offered  his 
sword  to  General  Andrew  Jackson  in  the  cam- 
paign against  the  British!  This  act  of  patriot- 
ism greatly  endeared  the  pirate  to  New  Orleans, 
and  if  he  had  stayed  in  the  city  until  death  gave 

[303] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

him  his  reward,  he  would  have  had  it  without 
any  doubt.  But  he  sailed  away  to  a  mysterious 
fate,  and  the  thwarted  Creoles  erected  a  monu- 
ment in  the  St.  Louis  Cemetery  to  his  lieutenant, 
Dominique  You,  calling  him,  of  all  things,  the 
new  Bayard — sans  peur  et  sans  reproche! 

Eugene  Field  and  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich 
have  given  their  genius  to  the  celebration  of 
the  Creole  charm,  and  France,  too,  contributed 
to  the  literature  that  has  grown  out  of  the  settle- 
ment of  Louisiana.  The  Abbe  Prevost's  "Ma- 
non  Lescaut,"  the  first  French  novel,  is  a  story 
of  the  filles  a  la  cassette,  the  "casket  girls"  who 
were  sent  over  from  France  to  those  wifeless 
settlers  who  were  "running  in  the  woods  after 
the  Indian  girls"  and  were  in  need  of  wives. 
Iberville  had  come  from  Canada,  following  in 
La  Salle's  footsteps  in  1699,  and  had  seen  what 
any  far-sighted  man  was  bound  to  have  seen, 
that  a  city  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  would 
be  also  at  the  mouth  of  the  whole  continent. 
Iberville  died  ignominiously  of  a  yellow  fever 
and  left  the  task  of  establishing  New  Orleans 
to  his  brother,  Bienville.  And  Bienville,  send-- 
ing  engineers  and  workmen  to  lay  out  the  city, 
actually  built  the  vieux  carre,  not  as  we  know  it 
to-day,  but  a  mere  scattering  of  wooden  huts, 

[304] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

a  camp  in  the  wilderness  of  swamps,  bayous  and 
forest. 

A  parade-ground  was  set  aside  and  destiny- 
made  it  the  Place  d'Armes,  Jackson  Square  of 
to-day,  the  "down  stage"  of  the  whole  drama 
of  New  Orleans.  Bienville  had  a  pretty  task 
before  him.  The  river  overflowed  its  banks, 
there  were  epidemics  and  hardships  and  dis- 
couragements without  end.  And  to  add  to  the 
poor  man's  anxieties,  the  lonely  settlers  clam- 
oured for  wives.  An  appeal  for  wives  was  sent 
to  France,  and  the  authorities  at  home,  scurry- 
ing about  in  mad  haste  to  meet  the  demands  of 
the  important  new  colony  in  Louisiana,  scoured 
the  houses  of  correction,  the  hospitals,  the  pris- 
ons and  the  streets  for  the  much-desired  wives, 
and  sent  them  to  the  wilderness  of  New  France. 
Poor  Manon  Lescaut  was  one  of  the  pathetic 
brides,  and  although  there  is  no  record  in  New 
Orleans  to  prove  that  the  Abbe  Prevost  founded 
his  fiction  on  fact,  it  is  at  least  certain  that  the 
Chevalier  des  Grieux  is  buried  there,  for  you 
may  see  his  grave,  if  you  are  curious  enough 
about  such  things,  to-day. 

The  first  shipments  of  wives  were  apparently 

not  acceptable  to  the  better  class  of  men  among 

the  colonists,  for  the  Cassette  girls,  dowered  by 

the  king  of  France  with  a  little  cassette  of  linen 

[305] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

and  fine  raiment,  were  sent  later  to  the  Ursuline 
nuns  to  be  chaperoned  and  then  married  with  a 
not  too  indecent  haste.  The  Ursulines  must  have 
had  their  hands  full  if  all  the  girls  were  as  pretty 
as  Manon  and  all  the  colonists  as  ardent  as  the 
Chevalier  des  Grieux! 

After  that,  the  lively  history  of  the  place  was 
varied  by  the  coming  and  going  of  this  governor 
and  that  governor,  the  building  of  forts  and  the 
expulsion  of  the  Jesuit  priests,  who  had  estab- 
lished themselves  in  the  town.  And  in  1762 
France,  with  a  sudden  cessation  of  interest  in 
her  colony,  ceded  Louisiana  to  Spain.  When 
one  considers  that  Louisiana  began  at  the  Mis- 
sissippi and  ended,  more  or  less  indefinitely,  at 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  France  seems  to  have 
been  even  recklessly  generous!  The  Creoles 
very  naturally  resented  the  transfer  and  sent  up 
a  howl  of  protest.  But  Louis  XV  had  wires 
of  his  own  to  pull.  He  said  nothing,  silence  be- 
ing the  better  part  of  discretion,  and  a  Spanish 
governor,  Ulloa,  arrived  at  New  Orleans.  It 
took  five  years  for  the  resentment  of  the  Creoles 
to  reach  the  boiling  point;  then  they  ousted 
Ulloa  and  might  have  joined  the  British- Amer- 
ican colonies  of  the  North  if  the  fiery  Don  Ales- 
sandro  O'Reilly,  with  three  thousand  troops, 
fifty  pieces  of  artillery  and  twenty-four  ships, 

[306] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

had  not  arrived  to  discipline  the  unruly  colo- 
nists. He  began  his  tirade  by  shooting  six  of 
the  most  rebellious  spirits  and  imprisoning  six 
more  in  the  unsavoury  dungeons  of  Morro  Cas- 
tle. He  believed  in  thoroughness,  this  Spanish- 
Irish  Don  Alessandro  O'Reilly! 

During  tne  Spanish  possession  the  crude,  ill- 
paved  and  badly  drained  town  planned  by  Bien- 
ville was  destroyed  by  fire.  The  vieux  carre  of 
to-day  is  the  Spanish  town  which  rose  from  the 
ashes  of  the  old  French  settlement,  so  that  we 
owe  the  adobe  and  stuccoed  brick  walls,  the 
arcades  and  cool  inner  courts,  the  iron  balconies 
and  tiled  roofs  to  Spanish  and  not  to  French  in- 
fluence. 

We  should  be  particularly  grateful  to  one 
public-spirited  Spaniard,  Don  Almonaster  y 
Roxas,  who  built  the  St.  Louis  Cathedral  and 
the  splendid  old  Hall  of  the  Cabildo  facing  the 
wide,  open  space  which  was  then  known  as  the 
Place  d'Armes  and  has  been  renamed  Jackson 
Square  to  suit  the  American  tongues  of  the  pres- 
ent generation. 

The  Cabildo  houses  an  interesting  collection 
of  Indian  relics  and  colonial  antiques.  In  the 
Sala  Capitular  on  the  second  floor,  Louisiana 
was  ceded  from  Spain  to  France  and  from 
France  to  the  United  States.     But  I  scarcely 

[307] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

paused  on  the  stairway  to  glance  at  the  portrait 
of  La  Salle  in  a  curled  wig  and  armour,  or  to 
look  at  the  paintings  of  Bienville  and  Iberville, 
fathers  of  the  delectable  New  Orleans.  I  hur- 
ried past  them  because  I  knew  that  the  Antom- 
marchi  death-mask  of  Napoleon  was  upstairs  in 
one  of  the  salons  facing  the  Place  d'Armes. 
Allan  followed,  helping  the  lover  of  New  Or- 
leans to  negotiate  the  stairs  as  nimbly  as  the 
piece  of  German  shrapnel  allowed.  And  when 
we  were  all  three  bending  over  the  glass  case 
where  the  mask  is  displayed,  we  gasped,  for  we 
might  have  been  looking  at  the  quiet  face  of 
the  Little  Corporal  himself. 

"How  like,"  the  lover  of  New  Orleans  said  in 
a  gentle  voice,  "how  amazingly  like  him !"  And 
then  smiled  at  his  own  assumption  of  familiarity. 

The  head  lies  against  a  dark  background  of 
velvet  or  some  soft  stuff,  and  it  is  startlingly 
lifelike,  almost  palpitant  in  its  extraordinary 
reality.  It  seemed  to  us  the  face  of  a  young  man. 
The  cheek  bones  are  broad,  the  chin  powerful, 
thrust  forward  and  deeply  dented.  The  mouth 
is  open,  the  lips  drawn  back  from  the  teeth  in 
a  half  smile,  a  shadowy,  indistinct,  fleeting  smile 
touched  with  irony  and  with  tenderness.  The 
eyes  are  full-lidded  and  deeply  sunk,  either  from 
pain  or  weariness  or  in  the  strange  metamorpho- 

[308] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

sis  of  death.  The  nose  is  magnificent.  It  is  an 
heroic  nose,  a  nasal  extremity  worthy  of  an  epic 
poem;  it  springs  grandly  from  the  forehead,  the 
nostrils  are  clean-cut  and  spirited;  the  whole 
structure,  like  noble  architecture,  inspires  awe 
and  admiration.  We  prostrated  ourselves  before 
Dr.  Antommarchi's  record  of  that  superb  olfac- 
tory organ,  Allan  comparing  it  to  Emma  Eames', 
the  lover  of  New  Orleans  ranking  it  with  No- 
vel's, and  I  claiming  for  it  a  place  in  the  sun 
with  Scotti's  incomparable  nose. 

If  Nicholas  Girod,  mayor  of  New  Orleans, 
had  had  his  way,  New  Orleans  might  have  pos- 
sessed the  body,  as  well  as  the  death-mask  of 
the  Emperor.  Girod  was  an  ardent  Napoleon- 
ist  and  a  bitter  enemy  of  England.  With  Cap- 
tain Bossiere  and  a  few  other  sympathisers,  he 
actually  attempted  to  cheat  the  English,  St. 
Helena  and  death.  Girod  built  a  house  at  the 
corner  of  St.  Louis  and  Chartres  Streets  and 
furnished  it  for  Napoleon's  use.  Bossiere 
equipped  a  fast  clipper,  the  Seraphim,  for  the 
voyage  of  rescue  to  St.  Helena.  The  crew  was 
engaged,  Bossiere  was  in  possession  of  maps  and 
plans  of  the  harbour  and  coast  defences  of  the 
prison-island,  and  the  magnificent  adventure 
might  have  been  put  through  to  a  glorious  finish 
if  death  had  not  snatched  away  the  prize.    The 

[309] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

news  of  Napoleon's  passing  reached  New  Or- 
leans three  days  before  the  Seraphine  and  the 
adventurous  Bossiere  were  ready  to  sail.  Bos- 
siere, of  course,  was  broken-hearted;  he  had 
dreamed  so  long  of  freeing  his  idol  from  a  de- 
testable bondage  and  bringing  him  across  the 
ocean  in  the  Seraphine  to  an  expectant  and  de- 
voted New  Orleans,  to  freedom,  to  the  simple 
luxury  of  Nicholas  Girod's  gift-house,  and  to 
peace  among  friends!  If  Napoleon  had  reached 
America,  it  is  not  at  all  improbable  that  New 
Orleans,  and  not  Paris,  would  have  claimed  his 
body  and  the  right  to  build  his  tomb.  He  would 
have  been  on  French  soil,  after  all! 

We  left  the  Cabildo  and  went  out  into  Jack- 
son Square  to  wander  up  and  down  the  sunny 
paths  between  the  neat  plots  of  grass  and  flow- 
ers laid  out  by  the  Baroness  Pontalba,  daughter 
of  that  public-spirited  Andalusian,  Don  Almo- 
naster  y  Roxas,  who  was  fired  by  the  paternal 
longing  to  beautify  New  Orleans.  For  she  built 
the  double  row  of  houses  flanking  the  square, 
and  with  a  likable  and  pardonable  pride,  had 
her  initials,  A.  P.,  interwoven  into  the  intricate 
patterns  of  the  beautiful  iron  balconies.  The 
buildings  have  fallen  into  decay,  and  where  they 
are  occupied  at  all,  the  tenants  seem  to  rejoice 
in  hanging  their  wash  on  the  balconies  to  dry. 
[810] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

The  fastidious  Baroness,  if  she  were  to  return 
to  New  Orleans  to-day,  would  not  recognise  the 
Pontalba  estate.  Jackson  Square  was  the  heart 
of  the  old  city;  but  modern  New  Orleans  wears 
her  heart  on  her  sleeve  over  in  Canal  Street,  and 
the  drowsy  little  square  was  deserted  except  for 
a  few  derelicts  who  had  set  up  light-housekeep- 
ing on  the  public  benches. 

We  went  over  to  the  French  Market,  hoping 
to  capture  a  little  of  the  local  colour  that  every 
other  traveller  has  encountered  among  the  vege- 
table and  fruit  stalls  of  the  old  Halle  de  Bou- 
cheries.  But  the  Creole  has  abandoned  the 
market  to  the  Italian  small  grocer.  Natives  of 
Reggio,  Calabria  and  the  Abruzzi  answered  my 
feeble  French  questions  with  blank  stares  or 
torrents  of  absolutely  unintelligible  Calabrese. 
One  black-eyed  son  of  Italy  posed  for  my  cam- 
era, holding  a  roach  delicately  between  thumb 
and  forefinger.  It  was  the  biggest  roach  I  have 
ever  seen,  and  I  am  thinking  of  sending  the  pho- 
tograph to  the  lover  of  New  Orleans  to  prove 
that  although  his  city  is  rat-proof,  and  mosquito- 
proof,  it  is  not  by  any  means  roach-proof. 

Allan  refused  to  take  any  interest  in  cabinet 
photographs  of  French  Market  roaches.  He 
established  himself  on  a  barrel  of  apples  and 
made  colour-sketches  of  the  long,  pillared  mar- 

[311] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

ket,  the  stands  of  fruits  and  vegetables,  the 
sunny,  cobbled  streets  beyond.  His  audience,  ex- 
pecting to  see  lifelike  portraits  of  silver-skinned 
onions,  smiting  radishes,  emerald-green  cab- 
bages, golden  oranges  and  yellow  beans,  hung 
over  his  shoulder  and  marvelled,  and  was 
vaguely  disappointed,  at  cublstic  swirls  and 
whirligigs  of  colour.  If  you  are  going  to  paint 
in  public,  and  want  to  be  popular  with  the  mob, 
you  should  try  to  keep  Picasso  out  of  your  work. 

"That,"  said  one  long-moustached  fruit  ven- 
dor, he  of  the  roach,  looking  over  Allan's 
shoulder  with  a  critical  air  and  pointing  with 
his  little  finger  at  a  daub  of  red,  "is  the  Signora 
Romano  of  the  vegetable  stand.  I  recognise  her 
shawl.  It  is,"  he  added,  winking  at  me,  "a 
speaking  likeness." 

"You  are  mistaken,"  a  little  fellow  who  was 
standing  on  tiptoe  interrupted.  "The  red  spot 
is  the  wheel  of  the  carriage  that  stands  outside 
in  the  street.  I  see  the  spokes,  and  the  left  ear 
of  the  horse  just  beyond." 

There  was  a  shout  of  laughter  and  Allan 
closed  his  pochade  box  with  a  snap.  "I'll  show 
you,"  he  said,  looking  fierce  and  knitting  his 
brows,  "that  I  can  draw  a  picture  of  your  Sig- 
nora Romano  and  your  red  cart  and  your  lop- 
eared  horse  that  the  great-grandmother  of  all 

[312] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

three  will  recognise  and  venerate.  Tell  Signora 
Romano  to  sit  where  she  is  and  not  to  move  on 
the  pain  of  death.  And  some  one  see  that  the 
horse  and  cart  stays  put." 

Thereupon  he  filled  his  mouth  with  pencils, 
and  while  the  fruit  vendor  shouted  to  the 
Signora  Romano  to  hold  fast  and  not  to  wink 
an  eye  for  ten  minutes,  the  insulted  artist  turned 
out  an  Art  Students'  League  chromo  that  created 
a  sensation  in  the  French  Market.  He  drew 
every  buckle  on  the  lop-eared  horse's  harness, 
he  reproduced  the  pattern  on  Signora  Romano's 
red  shawl,  he  painted  the  portrait  of  every  scar- 
let-cheeked apple  and  crusty  potato  and  feather- 
topped  celery  head  that  came  between  him  and 
his  line  of  vision.  A  chorus  of  "Ohs"  and  "Ahs," 
ecstatic  and  appreciative,  rose  from  the  Market 
as  the  awful  masterpiece  progressed. 

"It  is  the  Signora's  nose,  her  very  mouth,  her 
eyes " 


And  then  a  shout  to  the  rigid  and  blushing 
Signora,  "Don't  move!  The  gentleman  is  re- 
producing the  mole  on  your  cheek!" 

The  Signora,  stiffening,  gave  herself  to  im- 
mortality. 

When  it  was  finished,  Allan  plucked  the  pen- 
cils out  of  his  mouth  and  presented  the  work  of 
art  to  the  Market.     He  accepted  his  triumph 

[313] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

in  a  moody  silence  and  muttered,  as  soon  as  we 
were  beyond  earshot,  "Shades  of  Cellini  and 
Giotto!  The  Italians  of  to-day  have  drifted  into 
an  artistic  backwater.  What  a  fool  I  was  not 
to  make  them  swallow  what  is  good  for  them!" 

But  the  lover  of  New  Orleans  and  I  shouted 
with  laughter  all  the  way  back  to  Jackson 
Square,  although  Allan's  depression  lasted  still 
further  and  couldn't  be  done  away  with  until  the 
paternal  waiter  at  the  Louisiane  had  restored 
both  self-respect  and  good  humour  by  serving 
three  "Smiles,"  cocktails  calculated  to  warm  the 
heart  of  the  most  misunderstood  artist  in  the 
world. 

"I  am  sorry,"  the  lover  of  New  Orleans  said, 
as  we  came  out  into  the  street  again,  vastly 
cheered,  "that  you  have  heard  so  much  Italian 
and  so  little  French  spoken  in  the  vieux  carre. 
Creole  French  is  full  of  an  ingratiating  softness. 
Like  the  English  of  New  England  and  the 
French  of  Canada,  it  has  remained  practically 
unchanged,  except  for  the  inevitable  colloquial- 
isms, since  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies; it  is  strangely  affected,  too,  by  the  dialect 
of  the  Creole  negroes,  whose  speech  is  a  mad 
jumble  of  African  and  French,  and  is  unintel- 
ligible except  to  the  initiated.  The  Creole  negro 
is  a  strange  concoction;  he  may  be  a  'modern 

[814] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

nigger'  as  far  as  the  eye  can  penetrate  him,  but 
in  his  soul  of  souls  he  is  still  a  prey  to  terrifying 
superstitions.  Voudouism  may  have  been  put 
under  the  ban  of  the  police,  but  it  is  still  exist- 
ent. To  stamp  out  witchcraft  of  that  sort  would 
mean  stamping  out  the  ignorance  of  the  negro 
soul.  I  have  seen  some  of  their  rites ;  they  chant, 
they  eat  loathsome  brews,  they  dance  themselves 
into  a  cataleptic  state.  If  you  have  seen  Ridgely 
Torrance's  'Granny  Maumee'  you  know  how 
dangerous  such  frenzies  of  hate  and  terror  can 
be.  Beauregard  Square  used  to  be  the  place 
where  the  negroes  gathered  to  go  through  their 
detestable  orgies.  It  was  called  Congo  Square 
in  the  old  days,  for  the  Voudou  rites  and  dances 
were  brought  by  the  first  slaves  from  Africa." 
We  thought  that  the  grisly  past  of  Congo 
Square  made  going  there  a  futile  pilgrimage 
unless  we  could  see  a  Voudou  seance  ourselves. 
But  the  lover  of  New  Orleans  assured  us  that 
the  lid  had  not  only  been  clamped  down  on 
absinthe,  or  for  that  matter  on  any  sort  of  a 
drink  on  Sundav,  but  on  the  faintest  suspicion 
of  Congo  orgies.  A  negro,  to  keep  strictly 
within  the  law,  must  boil  his  toads  and  snakes  in 
the  privacy  of  his  own  home,  and  he  may  not 
build  sacrificial  fires  or  brew  poisons  or  "throw 
a  hoodoo"  unless  he  does  it  behind  closed  doors. 

[815] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

So  long  as  the  sensitive  police  do  not  see  the 
affair,  it  may  go  on.  But  woe  betide  the  Vou- 
dou  Queen  who  cavorts  in  public! 

The  lover  of  New  Orleans,  seeing  that  we 
were  in  a  state  of  mind  for  horrors,  piloted  us 
down  Bourbon  Street  to  see  the  Haunted  House, 
where  a  certain  Madame  Lalaurie,  a  society 
woman  of  charm  and  influence,  amused  herself 
in  her  moments  of  leisure  by  torturing  her  slaves. 
She  tied  them  to  the  walls  with  heavy  iron 
chains,  she  flogged  them  and  bruised  and  starved 
them.  Afterwards,  with  a  tender  smile  and  an 
air  of  great  sweetness,  she  descended  to  her 
beautiful  drawing-room  and  entertained  the 
elite  of  New  Orleans  society.  And  the  pretty 
sport  might  have  gone  on  indefinitely  if  one  of 
the  slaves  had  not  set  fire  to  the  straw  pallet  of 
her  miserable  bed  and  brought  the  fire  depart- 
ment and  the  light  of  publicity  to  the  scandal. 
Madame  Lalaurie  escaped,  fortunately  for  her 
own  good,  since  a  mob  had  gathered  to  burn,  pil- 
lage and  lay  waste  her  home  and  to  tear  the 
gentle  Lalaurie  herself  into  ribbons.  She  some- 
how got  to  France  and  disgraced  charity  by 
becoming  charitable,  and  died,  we  hope,  in 
despair. 

We  might  have  stayed  in  the  vieux  carre  for- 
ever, pursuing  such  stories,  and  many  roguish 

[3161 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

and  pleasant  ones,  from  street  to  street  and  from 
house  to  house.  But  we  had  engaged  passage 
to  New  York  on  a  certain  steamer  called  the 
Concho  sailing  from  Galveston  in  a  day  or  so. 
We  had  to  go  on.  And  that  is  the  penalty  of 
being  a  tourist.  The  tickets  were  in  the  leather 
pocket-book  in  Allan's  vest  pocket;  the  Concho 
apparently  held  to  a  rigid  schedule  and  couldn't 
be  bribed  to  wait  over  until  we  had  exhausted 
the  fascinations  of  those  sixty  squares  of  Creole 
town. 

We  walked  for  the  last  time  through  the  nar- 
row streets,  and  heard  the  real  New  Orleans 
singing  little  love  songs  behind  her  open  win- 
dows, saw  her  flirting  lazily  in  her  courtyards, 
dined  with  her  for  the  last  time  at  Antoine's  and 
then  fell  into  a  taxi-cab,  reeled  across  the  city 
on  two  wheels  and  caught  the  El  Paso  express 
by  the  fraction  of  a  second. 


[317] 


CHAPTER  XII 

GALVESTON,   THE  OPTIMIST 

FTER  the  train  left  New  Orleans  it 
ambled  in  a  leisurely  way  along  the 
banks  of  the  river  as  if  it  were  look- 
ing for  a  good  place  to  wade  across. 
The  long  search  piqued  our  curiosity  for  we 
knew  that  the  most  courageous  trestle  in  the 
world  could  scarcely  straddle  the  rushing  Mis- 
sissippi. While  most  of  the  passengers  stowed 
themselves  away  behind  the  swaying  green  cur- 
tains of  their  berths,  we  preferred  to  stay  awake 
and  to  see  the  manner  of  our  crossing. 

If  La  Salle  and  Iberville  and  Bienville  could 
have  witnessed  the  miracle  of  an  express  train 
being  ferried  across  the  mighty  river  that 
whirled  their  fragile  craft  towards  the  Gulf  like 
jetsam,  they  would  have  known  that  man  was 
destined  to  conquer  the  Mississippi,  to  hold  it 
in  leash  and  to  make  it  do  his  bidding.  We 
Stopped  at  a  small  station  at  the  water's  edge  and, 
with  nothing  more  startling  than  a  slight  jerk 
and  a  bump,  the  long  train  was  divided  into  sec- 

[318] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

tions  and  put  aboard  <a  barge.  The  drowsy- 
passengers  did  not  even  bother  to  look  out  of 
the  windows,  but  Allan  and  I,  unused  to  such 
spectacles,  left  the  Pullman  altogether  and 
watched  the  crossing  from  the  deck  of  the  pon- 
derous ferry. 

Night  had  snuffed  out  earth  and  sky  in  a 
stiffling  blanket  of  darkness,  and  we  could  see 
nothing  at  first  but  the  two  powerful  tugs  that 
drew  us  across  the  river  and  the  towering  super- 
structure of  the  barge,  where  a  watchful  pilot 
paced  back  and  forth  like  a  sea  captain  on  the 
bridge  of  a  ship.  We  went  forward,  baffled  and 
furious,  and  sought  compensation  for  the  black- 
ness of  the  night  in  watching  the  locomotive. 
The  big  monster  was  as  tranquil  as  a  drowsy 
cab-horse  and  tended  by  a  solicitous  engineer 
who  rubbed  and  oiled  his  steed  with  tenderness 
and  enthusiasm.  I  shouted  to  Allan  above  the 
thundering  reverberations  of  steam  and  the 
rushing  of  water,  "I  can't  see  anything/  Where 
is  the  Mississippi?" 

"Under  us,"  Allan  answered. 

Providence  must  have  heard  my  groan  of  de- 
spair for  a  great  scarlet  disc  of  a  moon  appeared 
magically  on  the  horizon  and  rose  like  a  whirl- 
ing pin-wheel  of  light,  trailing  fiery  reflections 
across  the  wide  expanse  of  the  river.    We  saw 

[319] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

the  Mississippi  from  bank  to  bank,  rolling 
grandly  down  to  the  Gulf,  inexpressibly  roman- 
tic and  beautiful  and  unforgettable.  Providence 
had  arranged  a  spectacular  finis  to  our  fog- 
befuddled  journey;  it  was  tardy  generosity  per- 
haps, but  we  were  properly  grateful,  watching 
the  magnificent  decor  until  the  ferry  bumped 
gently  against  the  shore  again  and  we  were 
warned  by  a  dervish  of  a  conductor  frantically 
swinging  a  lantern  that  if  we  didn't  "get  aboard" 
we  would  be  abandoned  by  the  El  Paso  express 
altogether. 

I  made  no  feint  at  going  to  sleep,  for  as  soon 
as  the  train  was  safely  ashore  again  and  hitched 
together  in  its  proper  sequence,  we  spun  mag- 
nificently across  Louisiana,  Louisiana  illumi- 
nated by  Providence's  moon,  no  longer  scarlet 
but  icy  white  and  as  penetratingly  brilliant  as 
a  spot-light.  I  have  an  unfortunate  enthusiasm 
for  new  country.  There  are  people,  I  know, 
who  can  sleep  soundly  in  a  train  that  is  crossing 
Umbria  or  climbing  the  Semmering  or  rushing 
magnificently  across  the  American  desert.  And 
I  hate  them  for  their  indifference  while  I  envy 
them  their  somnolence. 

"Mr.  Foster"  had  managed  to  get  compart- 
ments for  us  and  a  spotless  darkey  in  a  white 
coat  "made  up"  my  berth  with  such  cunning  art 

[320] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

that  I  should  have  gone  to  sleep  at  once  to  show 
my  appreciation  of  his  handiwork.  If  we  could 
only  apprentice  our  housemaids  to  Pullman 
porters!  Might  it  not  be  a  money-making 
scheme  for  some  ebony  white-coated  potentate 
to  start  a  correspondence  school  for  scientific 
bed-making?  A  Pullman  porter  folds  sheets 
just  as  a  hotel  waiter  folds  napkins — there  are 
crepey  irregularities  and  fan  plaitings  and  deco- 
rative creases.  A  Pullman  porter  knows  to  a 
nicety  the  exact  angle  of  a  blanket,  the  exact 
adjustment  of  a  fat,  snow  white  pillow.  When 
the  master  bed-maker  of  the  El  Paso  express 
had  backed  discreetly  out  of  the  compartment, 
wishing  me  a  "very"  good  night,  I  surveyed  his 
handiwork  with  a  pang  of  regret,  for  I  did  not 
intend  to  lie  in  it.  I  lay,  rather,  upon  it,  with 
the  pillow  tucked  cosily  behind  my  head.  Then 
I  turned  out  the  light  and  raised  the  window 
curtain. 

We  were  rushing  smoothly  across  vast  fields. 
Long  ditches  of  shallow  water,  shining  like 
threads  of  platinum  in  the  white  moonlight, 
pointed  in  oddly  converging  lines  towards  the 
horizon.  The  moon  had  climbed  swiftly,  like 
an  ambitious  society  woman,  and  was  sailing 
serenely  overhead,  crystal  clear  in  a  starless  sky. 
I  watched  for  an  hour.     Plain  and  sky  and  il- 

[321] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

limitable  horizon.  ...  I  watched  another  hour 
— plain  and  sky — Texas  perhaps.  .  .  . 

Then  I  fell  asleep. 

We  were  in  Houston  when  I  woke  and  it  was 
dawn,  a  nice,  fresh  dawn  prettily  tinted  with 
fleecy,  gold-lined  clouds.  Allan  was  already 
dressed  and  standing  on  the  station  platform 
haloed  by  clouds  of  cigarette  smoke  and  in  ani- 
mated conversation  with  the  fattest  conductor  I 
have  ever  seen.  They  were  reading  the  latest 
war  news  in  the  Houston  morning  paper  and  I 
heard  the  fat  conductor  say  that  he  would  be 
afraid  to  go  by  steamer  to  New  York,  "what 
with  the  U-boats  and  raiders."  Allan  reminded 
him  that  war  had  not  been  declared,  but  the  con- 
ductor had  a  low  opinion  of  German  military 
methods. 

"You  can't  count  on  'em,"  he  said  in  a  lugu- 
brious voice.  "They're  just  as  apt  as  not  to  sink 
you  before  you  get  to  Key  West.  Travellin' 
alone?" 

Allan  confessed  that  he  had  a  sister  in  tow. 

"Ain't  she  afraid?" 

Allan  thought  not. 

"Well,  if  /  were  you  and  had  a  sister,  I'd  go 
back  by  train.  They'll  get  you  as  sure  as  my 
name's  Spencer  Jones." 

This   was   professional    railroad   advice   and 

[322] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

Allan  said  stoutly  that  the  sea  was  good  enough 
for  him,  raiders  or  no  raiders,  U-boats  or  no 
U-boats;  he  would  rather  take  his  chances  in  the 
Concho  than  be  blown  to  pieces  by  dynamite  or 
some  railroad  bridge  in  the  Middle  West.  The 
fat  conductor,  who  apparently  considered  us 
both  lost,  waddled  away  mumbling,  "They'll  get 
you!  You  watch  out.  Never  saw  a  German  yet 
who  wasn't  quick  on  the  trigger." 

All  we  saw  of  Houston,  as  we  pulled  slowly 
out  of  it  again,  was  forlorn  and  ugly.  Workmen, 
heavy-eyed  and  morose,  plodded  to  work;  some 
of  them  paused  by  the  tracks  to  watch  the  train, 
perhaps  envious  of  its  freedom,  but  none  of  them 
seemed  aware  of  the  magnificent  sunrise  that 
was  doing  its  best  to  glorify  the  drab  factories 
and  warehouses  and  to  transform  the  first  hour 
of  the  long  day.  It  is  a  pity  that  railroads  enter 
cities  by  the  back  door,  for  it  would  have  been 
much  nicer,  for  us  at  least,  if  the  El  Paso  express 
had  passed  through  Houston's  residential  streets. 
Instead,  like  a  shame-faced  tramp,  it  picked  its 
way  through  dreary  slums  and  forlorn,  untidy 
yards. 

The  approach  to  Galveston  is  a  spectacular 
exception  to  the  general  rule,  however.  The 
casual  tourist  is  entranced  before  he  has  fairly 
arrived  at  the  station,  for  a  two-mile  causeway 

[323] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

has  been  thrown  out  from  Galveston  Island  to 
the  Texas  mainland.  Superlatives  are  the  order 
of  the  day  before  Galveston  itself  has  appeared 
on  the  horizon  and  superlatives  continue  to  be 
in  demand  as  long  as  one  remains  in  the  city. 
Like  Messina,  Galveston  has  been  built  and  re- 
built upon  the  ruins  of  itself;  it  has  withstood 
wind,  water  and  fire;  it  has  been  blown  down, 
flooded  and  burned,  not  once  but  several  times. 
And  always  it  has  emerged  triumphant,  the  peo- 
ple labouring  with  the  tireless  patience  of  ants 
to  cover  up  the  ruin  and  to  forget  the  cataclysm. 
It  is  not  considered  good  form  to  mention 
hurricanes  and  tidal  waves  in  Galveston ;  the  city 
resents  any  discussion  of  her  secret  infirmity. 
The  year  1900  is  skipped  lightly  over  by  local 
historians  and  the  penny  guide  books  and  adver- 
tising pamphlets  date  everything  from  1902. 
Curious  tourists  are  not  supposed  to  notice  the 
discrepancy;  but  it  becomes  conspicuous  when 
one  learns  that  the  whole  city  of  Galveston  was 
raised  nineteen  feet — houses,  streets,  sidewalks, 
sewers,  parks  and  all — not  very  long  after  that 
curious  omission.  Why,  one  asks,  should  a  mod- 
ern city  have  been  lifted  bodily  nineteen  feet 
into  the  air  unless  the  inhabitants  had  an  expen- 
sive desire  to  look  down  upon  the  Gulf  of  Mex- 
ico?   And  eventually,  whether  the  tourist  comes 

[324] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

from  New  England  or  East  Africa,  he  learns 
the  truth. 

For  Galveston  has  an  implacable  enemy.  Like 
Torre  Annunziata  and  Herculaneum,  the  great 
seaport  lives  in  the  shadow  of  possible  destruc- 
tion. The  first  storm,  which  tore  across  the  Gulf 
like  a  devastating  fury  in  September,  1900,  prac- 
tically destroyed  the  city.  Wind,  tidal  wave, 
flood  and  fire!  Small  wonder  that  Galveston 
still  shudders  at  the  memory  and  refuses  to 
dwell  upon  it!  Baedeker  (whom  I  should  not 
have  consulted,  considering  the  tender  state  of 
German-American  sentiment)  puts  the  number 
of  victims  at  an  indefinite  six  or  eight  thousand. 
The  actual  toll  does  not  matter.  We  do 
know  that  houses  were  unroofed,  smashed  to 
splinters,  reduced  to  atoms  before  the  mad  on- 
slaught of  the  hurricane;  we  do  know  that  Gal- 
veston was  cut  off  from  the  mainland  by  terrific 
seas,  and  buried  under  a  wall  of  water.  We  do 
know  that  people  drowned  like  rats  in  their 
houses  or  floated  out  into  the  Gulf  to  perish 
miserably  there.  And  we  agree  with  Galveston 
that  the  wretched  details  of  all  that  terror  and 
death  and  destruction  are  best  forgotten.  Gal- 
veston determined  to  go  on;  the  remnant  of  the 
population,  under  the  leadership  of  a  City  Com- 
mission, rebuilt  the  ruined  town  and  at  the  same 

[325] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

time,  with  no  frivolous  desire  to  "look  down" 
on  the  Gulf,  but  with  fiery  determination  to  get 
beyond  its  reach,  the  Galvestonians  raised  their 
city  nineteen  feet.  Not  content  with  this,  as  if 
pumping  twenty  millions  cubic  yards  of  sand 
into  the  city  were  a  mean  accomplishment,  a 
concrete  sea  wall  five  miles  long,  seventeen  feet 
high  and  sixteen  feet  wide  was  built  along  the 
water-front — a  barrier  calculated  to  rebuff  the 
most  impudent  tidal  wave  in  the  world.  To  cap 
the  climax,  Galveston  was  so  certain  that  she 
had  conquered  her  enemy  that  she  built  a  mil- 
lion dollar  hotel  directly  behind  the  sea  wall. 
Then  she  sat  back,  folded  her  hands  and  said, 
"Let  the  wind  howl  and  the  sea  rage.  Galves- 
ton is  secure." 

There  have  been  three  storms  since  the  epoch- 
making  hurricane  of  1900.  The  enraged  enemy, 
returning  to  the  attack  during  the  summer  of 
1916,  bit  large  pieces  out  of  the  sea  wall  and 
completely  wrecked  the  concrete  causeway 
which  links  the  city  to  Texas.  As  our  train 
crossed  the  tranquil  stretch  of  water  we  saw  the 
destruction.  Huge  slabs  of  concrete  are  tipped 
on  end,  smashed,  pulverised,  tossed  about  as  if 
playful  giants  had  caught  them  up  and  thrown 
them  down  again.  The  railroad  trestle  has  been 
repaired,  but  the  causeway  has  been  abandoned 

[326] 


A   GRAIN   ELEVATOR,    AS   GRIM   AND    SOMBRE   AS   A 
MEDIEVAL    FORTRESS 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

to  the  enemy.  Galveston  said  little  about  the 
storm,  and  I  am  quoting  the  driver  of  a  taxi- 
cab  (an  uncerain  authority)  when  I  venture  to 
say  that  over  a  hundred  people  were  sacrificed. 
But  the  sea  wall  withstood  the  attack  and  the 
million  dollar  hotel,  to  quote  again,  not  only 
"went  on  as  usual  with  little  or  no  interruption 
of  service,"  but  came  out  of  the  maelstrom  in- 
tact. 

There  is  something  magnificent  in  this  tenacity 
of  purpose.  Fancy  serving  six-course  dinners 
while  the  black  hurricane  raged  outside!  Fancy 
bellboys  answering  bells  and  carrying  clinking 
pitchers  of  ice  water  to  frightened  guests  while 
the  huge  hotel  shivered  and  rocked  in  the  teeth 
of  the  gale!  It  makes  one  shudder  for  Galves- 
ton's destiny,  for  man  has  never  defied  the  ele- 
ments with  more  impudence  or  greater  self- 
assurance.  You  may  ask  favours  of  nature,  but 
you  may  never  command  her,  and  you  take  your 
life  in  your  hands  when  you  challenge  her.  Gal- 
veston's million  dollar  hotel  says,  "Come,  if  you 
dare!"  I  should  not  care  to  be  in  Galveston 
when  nature  decides  to  accept  the  challenge. 
But  then  I  am  afraid  of  wind,  mortally  afraid 
of  it.  I  am  abject  and  craven  and  detestable 
in  a  hurricane.  I  simply  lie  down  and  die.  So 
I  am  possibly  prejudiced  when  I  warn  Galves- 

[327] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

ton  not  to  boast  too  smugly  of  her  invincible  sea 
wall.  Every  time  I  mention  it  I  put  down  my 
pen  and  rap  three  times  on  wood.  But  Galves- 
ton is  neither  Irish  nor  afraid  of  storms.  She 
pulls  herself  together  after  each  fresh  disaster, 
rebuilds  the  ruined  houses,  restrings  the  tele- 
graph and  telephone  wires,  buries  the  dead  and 
begins  again.  It  would  not  pay  to  abandon  one 
of  the  greatest  ports  in  the  world,  and  Ameri- 
cans do  not  surrender  so  easily. 

The  sea  was  breaking  gently  when  we  were 
there;  it  beat  against  the  enormous  concrete 
barrier  with  tender  little  caresses,  pretending 
friendship.  But  still  the  Gulf  seemed  over  us, 
around  us,  unavoidable  and  menacing;  it  drew 
our  gaze  just  as  the  slumbering  Vesuvius  at- 
tracts and  repels  the  Neapolitan. 

After  a  faultless  breakfast  at  the  million  dol- 
lar hotel  we  drove  through  the  city,  finding  lit- 
tle to  admire  beyond  the  magnificent  courage 
of  its  inhabitants  and  some  splendid  avenues  of 
royal  palms.  The  driver  of  our  taxi-cab  wanted 
us  to  take  the  Texas  Hero  monument  to  our 
hearts,  and  there  were  three  or  four  million- 
aires' residences  that  touched  his  simple  soul 
with  awe.  He  could  not  understand  why  we 
insisted  upon  driving  out  of  the  city  altogether 
to  spend  an  hour  watching  a  cotton  press.    He 

[328] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

stood  at  our  elbow  and  murmured  invitingly  that 
we  had  not  seen  the  Public  Library,  the  Ball 
School  or  the  City  Park.  .  .  . 

But  the  cotton  press  was  more  entertaining 
than  a  city  full  of  endowed  hospitals  and  public 
schools,  and  we  added  to  the  taxi-cab  driver's 
aesthetic  confusion  by  lingering  in  its  vicinity 
long  enough  for  Allan  to  sketch  the  press  at 
work.  A  cotton  press  is  a  machine  gifted  with 
uncanny  intelligence  and  the  strength  of  a  god. 
It  catches  a  roughly  packed  bale  of  cotton,  tosses 
it  neatly  into  the  exact  centre  of  a  woven  con- 
tainer, presses  it  between  two  enormous  steel 
slabs,  ejects  it  and  reaches  for  another.  There 
are  no  variations  in  its  precise  and  graceful  mo- 
tions. Negro  workmen  step  between  the  presses 
to  thread  and  secure  the  containers,  unconcerned 
and  facile,  singing  softly.  And  one  misstep,  one 
miscalculation  would  roll  them  out  as  flat  and 
as  featureless  as  pancakes! 

The  Concho  sailed  at  noon,  so  we  tore  our- 
selves away  and  hurried  to  the  dock,  stopping 
long  enough  in  the  city  to  buy  a  dozen  collars 
for  Allan  and  a  long  veil  for  me.  A  neat  trio 
of  Haytian  stewards  fell  on  our  luggage  and 
carried  it  aboard,  stowing  us  away  in  comfort- 
able cabins  on  the  main  deck.  A  handful  of 
guardsmen  and  some  romantic  looking  Mexicans 

[329] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

in  wide-brimmed  sombreros  shared  the  forward 
deck  in  amicable  proximity.  "Villa,  dead  or 
alive"  had  brought  the  guardsmen  to  Texas  and 
"higher  wages,  dead  or  alive"  was  the  bait  that 
had  lured  the  Mexicans  northward  toward  snow 
and  ice  and  undreamed  of  hardships. 

Promptly  at  noon  the  little  steamer  backed 
away  from  Galveston,  turned  right  about  face 
and  headed  for  the  Gulf.  Behind  us  we  could 
see  the  plucky  city,  still  touched  by  the  tragedy 
of  the  past,  strangely  unstable,  transient  and 
weird.  We  drifted  slowly  along  the  water-front, 
passing  beneath  a  towering  grain  elevator,  as 
grim  and  sombre  as  a  mediaeval  fortress.  There 
were  compact  rows  of  docks  and  wharves,  where 
ships  crowded  to  load  and  unload — freighters, 
tramps,  schooners,  and  two  big  English  steam- 
ers painted  grey  from  bow  to  stern.  We  waved 
our  hats  and  cheered  the  British  Jack.  At  last 
we  could!  The  English  crews,  as  dingy  grey  as 
their  ships,  waved  back  and  shouted  to  us 
"Don't  let  the  Germans  get  you,  Sammy!" 
The  Baratarian  pirate,  Jean  La  Fitte,  was  not 
alive,  but  we  were  no  more  secure  in  the  Con- 
cho than  we  would  have  been  in  a  Spanish  gal- 
leon in  the  days  of  Count  Bernardo  de  Galvez, 
Spanish  Viceroy  of  Mexico  and  patron  saint  of 
Galveston.  .  .  . 

[330] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

"Don't  let  the  Germans  get  you,  Sammy!" 
We  waved  our  hands  and  laughed.     "We 
won't!" 

And  the  Concho,  ignoring  such  absurdities, 
passed  the  furthermost  tip  of  Galveston  Island 
and  entered  the  dazzling  blue  of  the  Gulf. 


[331] 


CHAPTER  XIII 

KEY  WEST  AT  DAWN 


T  took  three  days  and  three  nights  to 
get  from  Galveston  to  Key  West.  The 
Gulf  of  Mexico  was  as  unruffled  as  a 
mirror,  and  there  was  nothing  to  do 
but  loll  in  our  steamer  chairs  while  the  "tired 
of  ages"  evaporated  from  our  spirits.  The 
Concho  was  a  steamer  one  somehow  cottoned 
to  on  first  acquaintance.  She  was  tidy  and 
small,  comfortable  but  not  cluttered  with  luxu- 
ries, and  there  was  a  total  absence  of  that  dis- 
tressing vibration  one  feels  on  fast  ships.  The 
twenty-eight  Mexicans  who  had  come  aboard 
at  Galveston  were  bound  for  the  frigid  North 
to  work  "somewhere  on  the  Lehigh  Railroad." 
They  lay  somnolent  on  the  forward  deck  with 
their  hats  over  their  eyes,  and  only  wakened  oc- 
casionally to  fraternise  with  the  khaki-clad 
guardsmen  who  had  picked  up  enough  pigeon- 
Spanish  on  the  border  to  carry  on  a  halting  con- 
versation. The  guardsmen  confessed  to  a  sneak- 
ing fondness  for  the  game  little  peons,  but  there 

[332] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

was  nothing  black  enough  in  the  way  of  adjec- 
tives to  garnish  their  opinion  of  the  border 
Texans.  Their  feeling  toward  the  Mexican  was 
more  or  less  neutral,  but  their  dislike  of  the 
Texan  was  a  real  and  impressive  thing. 

Life  aboard  the  Concho  was  delightful.  It 
may  have  been  the  geniality  of  Captain 
Mcintosh,  who  looked  like  Wallingford — 
Wallingford  in  uniform! — and  was  one  of  the 
finest  types  I  have  encountered  in  the  American 
Merchant  Marine  service.  It  may  have  been 
the  Austrian  pastry-cook's  triumphant  cakes 
and  pies,  or  the  soft  voices  and  ingratiating 
manners  of  the  Dutch  East  Indians  and 
Haytians  in  the  crew.  Or  it  may  have  been  the 
sea,  which  never  fails  to  tinge  one's  own  mood 
with  its  vast  impersonality.  Or  it  may  have 
been  because  the  Concho  was  a  small  ship.  The 
giant  ocean  greyhounds  of  ante-bellum  days  were 
meant  for  the  timid  landlubber  who  felt  more 
secure,  for  some  inexplicable  reason,  when  there 
were  ten  stories  between  him  and  the  deep.  For 
my  part,  I  like  to  hear  the  slap  of  the  boisterous 
waves  against  the  sides.  I  like  to  lean  on  the 
rail  within  nose-touch  of  the  patterned  foam 
rushing  by  in  endless,  dissolving  repetition.  I 
like  to  feel  the  sting  of  spray  tossed  back  by  the 
runting  bow.     I  like  to  stand  by  the  ventilators 

[333] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

and  listen  to  the  muffled  clatter  and  shouting 
down  in  the  boiler  room.  At  night  I  like  to  sit 
on  the  forward  deck  where  I  can  watch  the  mast 
light,  like  a  fiery  spark,  swinging  against  the 
ice-blue  stars.  I  like  to  be  on  intimate  terms 
with  the  sea,  never  unaware  of  it  but  watchful 
and  deliciously  afraid,  as  I  would  fear  an  in- 
dulgent and  unstable  god.  I  like  to  talk  now 
and  then  to  the  crew,  and  if  I  see  the  captain 
or  the  first  officer  squinting  at  sun-spots  through 
a  sextant,  I  like  to  be  allowed  to  squint,  too.  I 
prefer  a  capstan  to  the  dubious  luxury  of  a 
steamer  chair.  I  like  to  watch  the  whirling  log- 
line  and  the  wake  churned  into  milky  foam  by 
the  ship's  swift  passing.  I  like  to  lie  in  my 
berth  and  watch  the  black  waves  heaving  above 
the  horizon,  flecked  at  their  crests  with  fiery 
phosphorescence.  And  manifestly  I  couldn't  do 
any  of  those  things  aboard  what  newspaper  men 
call  a  Leviathan. 

Three  days  and  three  nights  passed  slowly  in 
a  procession  of  lazy  hours.  Just  after  we  had 
rounded  the  clawlike  tip  of  Galveston  Island  we 
encountered  a  heavy  ground  swell  which  sent 
most  of  the  more  imaginative  passengers  scurry- 
ing to  their  berths.  But  once  clear  of  that,  we 
moved  across  the  surface  of  the  water  like  a 
pasteboard  ship  blown  across  a  marble-topped 

[334] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

table.  When  Galveston  had  dropped  behind 
the  horizon,  there  was  no  further  sign  of  life 
until  we  caught  the  first  intermittent  flashes  of 
the  Tortugas  Light  on  the  evening  of  the  third 
day.  A  German  raider  was  supposed  to  be 
somewhere  in  the  neighbourhood,  and  although 
war  had  not  yet  been  declared,  there  was  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  speculation  as  to  whether  the 
raider  might  not  precipitate  matters  if  it  should 
happen  to  encounter  such  a  neat,  staunch,  fat 
little  morsel  as  the  Concho.  Three  of  the  twelve 
Germans  in  the  Concho's  crew  had  left  the  ship 
at  Galveston  to  cross  the  Texan  border  and  go 
into  Mexico,  probably  because  they  had  definite 
work  to  do  there  for  Germany.  The  Austrian 
pastry-cook,  author  of  the  culinary  masterpieces 
I  have  mentioned  before,  sat  in  the  galley  door 
between  his  moments  of  inspiration,  looking  as 
melancholy  as  a  man  can  look  who  is  a  mountain 
of  fat,  as  pale  as  dough  and  clad  in  a  sleeveless 
flannel  shirt  and  an  apron.  When  I  had  passed 
him  several  times  in  my  pacing  around  the  deck 
and  each  time  had  discovered  him  with  his 
shaven  head  buried  in  his  arms,  I  sought  the 
chief  steward  and  asked  him  why  a  talented 
pastry-cook  should  abandon  himself  publicly  to 
grief.  Were  the  Germans  in  the  crew  planning 
to  scuttle  the  ship?     And  did  the  pastry-cook 

[335] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

know  about  it?  Or  was  he  weeping  for  his 
government's  sins?  It  seemed  to  me  an  exagger- 
ated case  of  conscience. 

"He  is  afraid  of  internment,"  the  steward  ex- 
plained. "God  knows  why,  for  turn  about  has 
never  been  fair  play  in  America,  but  that  poor 
devil  had  visions  of  another  Wittenberg.  He 
owns  a  little  farm  in  New  Jersey,  and  in  the 
summer  time  he  leaves  the  Concho  and  potters 
about  in  his  vegetable  garden.  As  far  as  he  can 
understand,  that  is  all  over  for  him.  He  ex- 
pects to  be  nabbed  and  put  behind  a  wire  en- 
closure as  soon  as  we  touch  the  pier  in  New 
York.  And  I  tell  you,"  the  steward  assured  me 
with  a  grave  face,  "it  is  having  a  bad  effect  on 
his  pastry.  I  wish  I  could  convince  him  some- 
how. The  cherry  tarts  weren't  up  to  the 
standard  to-day." 

After  that,  I  lost  interest  in  the  desserts.  It 
always  seemed  to  me  that  they  were  flavoured 
with  Austrian  tears.  In  spite  of  my  affection  for 
Austria,  I  couldn't  quite  stick  a  lachrymose 
souvenir,  and  the  cook  was  a  prey  to  his  terror 
all  the  way  to  New  York. 

The  monotony  of  the  placid  Gulf  was  un- 
broken save  for  schools  of  flying  fish  that 
skimmed  the  surface  of  the  water  like  little  skip- 
ping-stones  and  disappeared  again  in  a  hoop  of 

[336] 


DOLPHINS  CAVORTED  AT  SUNSET,  TURNING  BEAUTIFUL 
SOMERSAULTS 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

ripples.  Portuguese  men-o'-war  sailed  past  in 
squadrons.  They  looked  like  large  opalescent 
bubbles,  but  they  were  amazingly  brisk  and 
intelligent  for  jellyfish.  With  the  sail-like  mem- 
brane attached  to  their  backs  they  contrived  to 
come  about,  to  tack,  to  run  before  the  wind — 
in  short,  to  behave  like  full-rigged  ships.  I  take 
off  my  hat  to  a  jellyfish  that  knows  enough  to 
jibe!  Dolphins  cavorted  at  sunset,  turning 
beautiful  somersaults — the  most  likable  and 
roguish  fellows  in  the  sea.  And  always  there 
was  an  escort  of  white-breasted  gulls  following 
close  astern. 

As  I  was  the  only  lady  in  the  first  cabin,  the 
stewardess  was  pathetically  devoted  to  me. 
Probably  because  the  poor  woman  was  bored 
and  had  nothing  better  to  do,  she  gave  her  un- 
divided attention  to  getting  me  out  of  bed  at 
seven  in  the  morning.  On  the  stroke  of  the 
minute  she  applied  herself  to  my  door. 

"Miss,  breakfast  is  served." 

"What  on  earth  do  you  want?"  was  my  greet- 
ing, muffled  by  as  much  of  the  sheet  as  I  could 
draw  over  my  head,  for  I  hate  to  be  stared  at  at 
seven  o'clock  in  the  morning. 

The  stewardess  always  pretended  to  be  sympa- 
thetic after  the  manner  of  her  kind.  She 
manoeuvred  to  unearth  me  from  under  the  sheet. 

[337] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

"I  do  believe  you  are  seasick.  And  on  a  calm 
day,  too!    Aren't  you  ashamed?" 

"I've  never  been  seasick  in  my  life.  Go  away, 
and  shut  the  door!" 

"Breakfast  is  ready,  Miss." 

"But  I  don't  want  breakfast  at  seven  o'clock. 
Go  away!" 

"Your  brother  is  on  deck,  Miss.  He's  been 
up  and  out  for  an  hour."  (That  was  a  gross 
exaggeration !)  "He  told  me  to  tell  you  that  you 
are  missing  everything  and  how  could  you  ex- 
pect to  write  a  book  if  you  sleep  all  day?" 

"He  said  that?" 

"He  did,  indeed." 

"Well,  go  away!    I  want  to  sleep." 

"There  is  corn-bread  for  breakfast,  Miss." 
And  so  on,  until  she  had  accomplished  her  pur- 
pose. 

I  have  only  one  thing  to  thank  her  for.  She 
got  me  out  of  bed  in  time  to  go  ashore  at  Key 
West.  We  had  caught  sight  of  Tortugas'  sultry 
flashes  late  on  Monday  night,  and  had  passed  the 
light  sixty-six  miles  from  Key  West  while  we 
slept.  I  knew  little  of  Tortugas  except  that  it 
has  played  the  role  of  an  American  St.  Helena 
for  several  prisoners — among  them  the  doctor 
who  cared  for  J.  Wilkes  Booth  and  who  was 
supposed   to   have  been   a  conspirator  in  the 

[338] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

assassination  of  Lincoln.  The  stewardess  woke 
me  at  dawn  with  the  magic  words,  "Key  West 
in  twenty  minutes,  Miss!"  And  before  she  had 
fairly  opened  the  door  I  was  on  my  feet. 

"All  right,  I'm  coming.  Twenty  minutes, 
did  you  say?" 

Key  West!  The  Cayo  Hueso  of  the  Span- 
iards! The  jumping-off  place;  America's 
furthest  south — a  city  to  touch  the  imagination! 
By  the  time  I  got  out  on  deck  the  first  faint 
blue  of  dawn  had  spread  over  the  sky.  The 
Concho  had  slowed  down  until  the  vibrations 
of  the  screw  sounded  like  a  muffled  heart  beat. 
Key  West  lay  just  ahead,  a  long  string  of  lights 
that  drifted  toward  us  across  the  water.  Puffs 
of  hot,  moist  wind  brought  the  odour  of  the 
wharves — the  inexplicable  smell  of  the  land. 
And  suddenly,  as  the  blue  light  deepened,  we 
saw  bulky  shadows,  vague  outlines  of  houses 
and  sheds,  a  ghostly  wireless  tower.  We  heard 
the  water  lapping  the  wharf  piles,  voices,  the 
liquid  laughter  of  black  men  and  a  chorus  of 
yapping  dogs. 

"Hi,  there,  Concho/" 

"Hi,  you!" 

And  as  if  a  veil  had  been  whisked  away,  we 
saw  the  wharf  just  under  us  and  a  row  of  people 
staring  up  and  waving.    The  mongrel  dogs  kept 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

up  their  infernal  howling  or  piled  themselves 
in  tangled  heaps,  snapping  and  tearing  each 
others'  ears  into  ribbons.  I  have  never  seen  such 
outcasts,  such  fortorn  pariahs  of  the  dog  world. 
Slinking,  cowardly,  shivering — they  alternately 
raised  their  begging  eyes  to  the  row  of  faces 
along  the  Concho's  rail  and  squatted  miserably 
to  scratch. 

Key  West  is  the  terminus  of  the  Florida  East 
Coast  Railway,  and  the  joining  of  the  island  city 
to  the  rest  of  Florida  by  a  series  of  trestles, 
bridges  and  concrete  viaducts  thrown  from  key 
to  key  has  brought  Cuba  to  within  ninety  miles 
of  the  American  mainland.  The  trip  from  Key 
West  to  Havana  takes  no  longer  than  the  cus- 
tomary channel  passage,  and  is  supposed  to  be 
one  of  the  most  expensive  short  crossings 
anywhere  in  the  world.  Only  one  meal  is  served 
during  the  trip,  and  as  the  bit  of  water  between 
Key  West  and  Havana  is  usually  as  rough  as  the 
English  Channel  in  mid-winter,  the  serving  of 
that  one  meal  is  more  or  less  of  an  empty  for- 
mality. As  one  discouraged  tourist  told  me, 
"The  trip  to  Havana  is  on  a  par  with  the  ascent 
of  Vesuvius — it  costs  a  fortune  to  go,  but  it  costs 
three  times  a  fortune  to  get  back  again.  The 
Cuban  learns  the  verb  to  extort,  even  if  he  pre- 
tends ignorance  of  the  verb  to  cheat — and  he 

[340] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

can  conjugate  the  verb  to  wheedle  in  every  one 
of  its  ninety-nine  tenses." 

The  engineering  feat  which  put  Key  West 
conspicuously  on  the  map  of  Florida  and 
brought  passengers  and  freight  trains  literally 
"overseas"  to  Cuba's  front  door,  is  one  of  the 
most  dramatic  and  spectacular  things  railroad- 
ing has  ever  accomplished,  the  climax  of  the 
Flagler  system's  exploitation  of  the  South. 
Florida  dwindles  at  its  furthermost  tip  into  a 
loosely-strung  chain  of  small  coralline  islands, 
some  of  them  habitable,  some  of  them  simply 
ridges  of  fluted  sand,  called  keys  or  cayos,  which 
divide  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  from  the  Straits  of 
Florida  for  over  a  hundred  miles.  The  railroad 
jumps  from  key  to  key  with  the  ease  of  a  colossus 
straddling  the  globe.  Part  of  the  time  the  con- 
crete arches  and  ponderous  trestles  rise  directly 
out  of  the  water,  so  that  the  approach  to  Key 
West  is  not  unlike  the  approach  to  Venice  from 
Mestre,  except  that  the  Venetian  viaduct  is  al- 
ways linked  with  the  shore  on  one  hand  and 
the  city  on  the  other,  while  the  Overseas  track 
seems  to  plunge  straight  out  to  sea  with  no  ap- 
parent objective  but  the  horizon.  Some  of  the 
white  natives  of  the  Bahama  Islands  have  settled 
in  the  Florida  keys  and  are  called  Conchs,  a 
name  which  suits  them  to  perfection.    They  are 

[341] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

nearly  always  fishermen,  for  they  live  in  a 
piscatorial  paradise,  a  sort  of  happy-hunting- 
ground  for  the  confirmed  angler.  The  waters 
of  the  keys  are  swarming  with  every  known 
variety  of  fish  from  the  mild  and  gentle  nibbler 
to  the  gamest  deep-sea  monster.  I  should  think 
that  a  fisherman  would  have  to  do  little  more 
than  whistle  for  his  living  down  there.  Key 
West  is  famous  for  its  turtle  soup,  made  from 
the  big  deep-sea  turtles  which  are  caught  in  the 
neighbourhood.  But  after  I  had  seen  the  pa- 
thetic, ugly,  unwieldy  creatures  on  the  docks, 
with  their  flat  feet  pierced  and  tied  together  with 
ropes,  I  could  not  have  managed  a  spoonful  of 
the  detestable  potage.  The  turtles  were  brought 
in  by  the  hundreds  and  crucified  in  the  most  re- 
volting and  ghastly  manner;  the  twisting  of  their 
parrot-like  heads,  the  futile  and  agonised  wav- 
ings  of  their  legs,  their  grotesque  sufferings  have 
made  turtle  soup  forever  an  impossibility  as  far 
as  I  am  concerned.  And  oh,  the  smell  of  turtles, 
dead  turtles,  drying  turtles,  turtles  in  their  death 
agonies,  turtles  spliced  and  bound,  but  still  alive, 
for  shipment!  The  odour  assailed  us  as  soon  as 
we  docked  at  Key  West,  and  I  was  not  happy 
until  a  broad  expanse  of  water  and  a  fresh  breeze 
had  dimmed  the  memory  of  it  and  made  breath- 
ing endurable  again.     I  cannot  understand  the 

[342] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

aesthetic  reasoning  which  shows  you  a  wharf 
full  of  stinking,  tortured  turtles  and  then  says, 
"Now  you  must  eat  our  turtle  soup!  We  pride 
ourselves  that  here  in  Key  West  you  may  taste 
the  uttermost  essence  of  turtle  soup,  the  master- 
piece, the  climax!"  Undoubtedly.  But  I  reeled 
past  the  temptation,  holding  the  tip  of  my  nose. 

Every  traveller  we  had  met  in  the  South  had 
consistently  blackened  Key  West's  reputation. 
It  was  dirty,  the  people  were  mongrel,  the  taxi- 
cabs  were  rusty,  the  hotels  were  bad,  there  was 
nothing  on  earth  to  see  but  a  banyan  tree. 
"Don't  go  there,"  we  had  been  told,  "unless  you 
are  sure  you  can  get  out  again  in  twenty-four 
hours."  It  is  apparently  fashionable  to  call  Key 
West  dirty,  just  as  it  was  fashionable  to  say  of 
Venice,  in  those  dim,  legendary  days  before  the 
war,  "Venice  is  beautiful,  my  dear,  but  how  the 
canals  smell!"  One  gives  with  the  left  hand 
and  takes  away  with  the  right.  The  truth  of 
the  matter  is,  Venice  doesn't  smell  except  in  the 
sultry  dog-days  of  August  and  September,  and 
Key  West — at  dawn — isn't  dirty  at  all.  I  almost 
hesitate  to  make  the  statement  for  fear  I  will  be 
called  unobservant;  Key  West  is  so  overwhelm- 
ingly accused  of  slovenliness! 

Perhaps  the  freshness  of  the  dawn  purified  the 
city;  perhaps  the  heavy  dews  of  the  semi-tropi- 

[343] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

cal  night  had  washed  it  clean.  Whatever  the 
reason  was,  Key  West  sparkled  for  us.  We  took 
an  automobile  driven  by  a  dark,  flashing  and 
very  black-eyed  Cuban  boy  who  was  lying  in 
wait  for  possible  tourists  from  the  Concho  just 
outside  the  entrance  to  the  wharf.  The  miser- 
able dogs  followed  us,  whining  and  begging 
and  snapping  until  we  had  climbed  into  the  ma- 
chine. The  Cuban  scattered  the  poor  creatures 
by  starting  the  car  with  a  terrific  jerk  and  an 
ear-splitting  squawk  of  the  horn.  A  fresh  breeze 
had  come  up  with  the  increasing  light  of  day — 
very  cool  and  invigorating,  life-giving  after  the 
stifling  calm  of  the  night.  It  fluttered  out  the 
ends  of  my  veil  so  that  they  flapped  like  a  sail  as 
we  turned  away  from  the  water-front  and  en- 
tered the  city.  The  sky  was  still  untouched  by 
the  direct  rays  of  the  sun;  the  blue  had  given 
way  to  a  luminous  pearl-grey  and  the  horizon 
was  banked  with  broken  thunder  clouds,  jagged 
and  blue-black,  which  sprang  toward  the  arch 
of  the  sky  like  torn  pennants.  Key  West  was 
asleep.  The  blinds  were  shut  like  lids  over  tired 
eyes.  The  shutters  of  the  shops  were  closed; 
there  were  no  motors,  no  horses,  no  pedestrians 
on  the  street;  even  the  big,  sulphur-yellow  Flag- 
ler hotel  looked  absolutely  deserted  and  empty, 

[34-4] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

as  forlorn  and  dreary  as  a  summer  hotel  in  mid- 
winter. 

The  Cuban  boy  asked  us  where  we  wanted 
to  go.  We  had  no  idea.  We  told  him  to  take 
us  "around  Key  West,"  and  that  we  wanted  to 
see  everything  there  was  to  see.  He  looked 
doubtful,  as  if  he  would  have  preferred  being 
given  a  definite  destination.  Responsibility  is 
irksome  to  a  handsome  boy,  but  being  asked  to 
entertain  two  insane  travellers  who  wanted  to 
look  at  a  city  before  daybreak  taxed  this  one's 
indulgence.  He  considered  the  thing  a  moment 
as  if  he  wondered  what  on  earth  he  could  show 
us  at  that  God-forsaken  hour.  Then  his  face 
brightened. 

"There's  the  banyan  tree,"  he  said. 

"Is  that  all  there  is  in  Key  West?"  I  de- 
manded. 

^Esthetically  there  was  apparently  nothing 
else.  The  banyan  tree  at  Key  West  carries  a 
heavy  burden.  Like  St.  Peter's,  it  must  never 
disappoint  the  pilgrim.  We  decided  to  wait 
until  after  dawn  to  see  it,  for  we  felt  that  such 
a  tourist-sop  must  be  as  self-conscious  as  the 
Sphinx.  Faint  puffs  of  rosy  light  were  be- 
ginning to  touch  the  peaks  of  the  thunder  clouds 
on  the  horizon,  so  we  told  the  Cuban  that  the 

[845] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

banyan  tree  could  wait  for  the  sunrise.  He  must 
take  us  out  of  the  city. 

There  is  a  single  main  street  (which  is  not 
really  a  slip  of  the  pen,  for  most  cities  have  main 
streets  crossing  each  other  at  right  angles),  and 
we  followed  it  to  the  outskirts  of  Key  West 
where  the  one  and  two-storied  frame  houses 
thinned  out  into  a  fringe  of  pretty  bungalows 
and  more  pretentious  private  houses.  In  the 
luminous  light  the  green  of  the  gardens  was  in- 
tensified a  hundred  times  so  that  every  leaf  and 
blade  of  grass  was  unnaturally  brilliant  in  hue. 
We  passed  a  cottage  which  was  buried  under  an 
avalanche  of  purple  bougainvillea.  The  streets 
were  clear  of  people  and  of  dust,  and  we  rushed 
smoothly  forward  against  the  boisterous  wind 
as  if  we  were  the  only  living  creatures  on  the 
face  of  the  earth.  The  road  passed  the  last  of 
the  bungalows,  ran  close  to  two  large  cigar  fac- 
tories where,  for  a  moment,  we  could  smell  the 
fragrant,  sweet  odour  of  tobacco,  and  then 
curved  away  toward  the  sea  again  between  fields 
and  a  tangled  growth  of  scrub  and  hardy,  shiny- 
leaved  bushes.  The  young  Cuban  urged  the 
motor  up  to  forty-five  and  we  spun  magnificently 
toward  the  sunrise. 

Gold  flakes  of  light  sprayed  up  from  behind 
the  purple  thunder  heads  and  floated  to  the  very 

[346] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

apex  of  the  sky  to  gild  every  wisp  and  shred  of 
vapour.  A  magnificent  conflagration  blazed  in 
our  eyes.  The  coming  of  the  sun  seemed  to  stir 
the  sluggish  and  immovable  thunder  clouds  into 
action.  They  rolled  majestically  aside  like  the 
parting  of  a  great  curtain  to  reveal  the  very  heart 
of  the  burning  day  as  it  stepped  over  the  horizon. 
The  tumbled  peaks  took  on  magnificent  shapes, 
thrust  higher  and  higher,  converged,  parted,  flat- 
tened themselves  into  anvil-like  plateaux.  The 
gold  light  turned  to  saffron,  then  to  rose,  then 
to  a  flaming  and  indescribable  scarlet.  And  as 
we  came  within  sight  of  the  sea  we  saw  that  it 
had  turned  from  black  to  a  vivid  ice-green — a 
Winslow  Homer  sea  laced  with  sandy  shoals  and 
dotted  with  shallow  islands. 

The  sun  came  up,  like  Kipling's  sun,  with  a 
crash,  and  climbed  with  incredible  speed  above 
the  thunder  clouds.  They  had  played  their  part 
in  the  morning  pageant  and  retreated,  like 
circus  supers,  over  the  edge  of  the  world  and 
out  of  our  sight.  We  drove  to  the  end  of  the 
boulevard  and  turned  back  just  where  the  gov- 
ernment wireless  station  is  being  built. 

Groups  of  workmen  were  trudging  out  to  the 
cigar  manufactories  as  we  entered  the  city — 
Cubans,  swarthy  and  slender,  Spaniards,  the  in- 
evitable negro.     And   Key  West  was  waking. 

[347] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

The  boisterous  wind  rattled  the  cocoa-palms  and 
the  wide,  stiff  leaves  of  the  sword-palms.  Win- 
dows opened  here  and  there  and  curious  eyes 
peered  at  us.  Shopkeepers  were  opening  the 
doors  of  their  shops  or  sweeping  off  their  front 
steps.  A  drowsy  night  clerk  stood  on  the  porch 
of  the  Overseas  Hotel  and  stretched  himself, 
taking  deep  breaths  of  the  morning  air.  The 
sun  gilded  the  ugly  little  houses  and  glorified 
them;  it  was  all  indescribably  fresh  and 
sparkling  and  buoyant. 

"And  now,"  the  young  Cuban  said,  with  the 
air  of  the  custode  of  Santa  Maria  Novella  when 
he  opens  the  door  of  the  Spanish  Chapel,  "I  will 
show  you  the  banyan  tree." 

He  wanted  us  to  get  the  full  impact  of  the 
sensation,  so  he  turned  in  at  the  barracks  gate 
at  top  speed  and  brought  us  up  to  the  banyan 
with  a  flourish.  I  don't  know  what  I  had  ex- 
pected. I  remember  that  I  had  formed  a  mental 
picture  of  a  colossus  of  a  tree,  an  octupus,  a  maze 
of  branches.  A  banyan,  to  me,  had  always  meant 
something  which  begins  by  being  a  sprout  and 
winds  up  as  a  forest.  The  banyan  at  Key  West 
disappointed  me.  It  did  all  it  was  supposed  to 
do ;  it  struck  its  branches  down  into  the  ground, 
it  multiplied  its  trunks,  it  was  as  smooth  and 
grey  as  a  snake's  skin.     But  it  was  not  large 

[348] 


THE    BOISTEROUS    WIND    RATTLED    THE    COCOA-PALMS 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

enough,  and  it  had  been  whitewashed.  I 
couldn't  manage  to  squeeze  out  a  superlative. 
I  gazed  on  the  banyan  in  utter,  abysmal  silence, 
aware  that  something  was  expected  of  me  but 
utterly  incapable  of  filling  in  the  conversational 
gaps. 

"It's  the  banyan,"  the  Cuban  said,  making  his 
eyes  very  round.  And  then,  seeing  that  he  had 
failed,  he  made  a  supreme  effort.  "Gee,"  he 
said  with  a  good  deal  of  passion,  "don't  you  see 
the  banyan?" 

Even  this  left  me  unmoved.  The  Cuban  gave 
me  a  savage  look  and  left  the  banyan  with  a 
violent  jerk.  We  spun  out  of  the  barracks  yard 
on  two  wheels,  narrowly  missing  the  toes  of  a 
sentry  on  guard  at  the  gate,  who  was  so  surprised 
that  he  saluted. 

The  Concho  was  "waiting  breakfast"  for  us 
when  we  got  back  after  a  zigzag  impression  of 
Key  West's  shopping  street.  Going  aboard  was 
like  returning  to  a  comfortable  home.  We 
smiled  at  the  familiar  faces  of  the  Haytian  stew- 
ards who  were  leaning  on  the  rail,  all  making 
striking  contrasts  of  themselves  by  wearing 
crisply  clean  white  coats.  As  soon  as  we  had 
swallowed  a  cup  of  coffee  we  went  on  deck  to 
watch  the  unloading  of  a  huge  shovel  which  had 
been  lashed  to  the  forward  deck  at  Galveston 

[349] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

and  had  been  the  bane  of  the  Captain's  existence 
all  the  way  across  the  Gulf.  He  stood  on  the 
bridge  and  roared  choleric  comments  on  the 
stupidity  of  his  crew,  the  lateness  of  the  hour, 
the  heat  of  the  day,  the  feebleness  of  the  steam 
winch  and  the  general  cussedness  of  everything. 
While  he  roared,  in  his  good-natured  but  per- 
fectly effective  way,  the  first  officer  became  fever- 
ishly, acutely  busy.  He  was  an  intense  English- 
man, a  fellow  who  took  everything  too  seriously 
and  who  invested  simple  duties  with  a  profound 
importance.  Now  he  stripped  off  his  coat,  knit- 
ted his  brows,  gave  orders,  promptly  took  them 
back  again,  hopped  from  one  side  of  the  deck 
to  the  other,  as  active  and  as  efficient  as  a  rabbit. 
The  Captain  leaned  from  the  bridge,  with  his 
Wallingford  cigar  protruding  from  one  corner 
of  his  mouth  like  a  torpedo  projectile,  and  added 
colour  to  the  moment  with  a  few  rumbling  and 
highly  picturesque  suggestions. 

The  big  shovel  rose  inch  by  inch  clear  of  the 
deck,  the  ropes  and  chains  that  held  it  screech- 
ing and  shrieking  under  the  strain.  A  long  line 
of  negroes  on  the  wharf  below  tugged  to  swing 
the  obstinate  mass  of  iron  away  from  the  ship. 
They  grunted  and  laughed — big,  black  fellows 
in  blue  jeans  and  tattered  shirts,  barefooted,  in- 
conceivably lazy.     They  laid  hold  of  the  rope 

[350] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

with  their  powerful  hands  and  swayed  and 
jerked  in  unison. 

While  we  watched,  a  tall,  bullet-headed  negro 
in  a  bathing-suit  appeared  on  the  wharf  and  of- 
fered to  dive  for  us. 

"Gimme  a  quarter!"  he  shouted,  "gimme  a 
quarter!  Down  heah.  In  the  water.  Quick! 
Gimme  a  quarter,  please,  sir."  Then  he  capered 
and  grinned  and  made  wide  gestures.  "Watch 
me  dive.  Dive  foh  a  quarter.  Down  heah. 
Right  heah  in  the  water.    Throw  it,  please,  sir!" 

There  was  no  resisting  him.  He  scrambled  to 
the  top  of  one  of  the  wharf  piles  and  balanced 
there  a  moment,  looking  like  a  wet  codfish.  The 
quarter  flashed  through  the  air  and  he  dived 
after  it,  as  straight  and  clean  a  dive  as  any  I 
have  ever  seen.  For  an  instant  his  squirming 
black  body  hung  below  the  surface  of  the  water, 
then  he  came  up,  spluttering  and  laughing,  with 
the  quarter  between  his  teeth.  He  was  aware  of 
his  talents,  for  when  one  of  the  stewards  threw 
him  a  dime  he  let  it  sink  slowly  out  of  sight  with- 
out stirring  a  muscle  to  dive  for  it. 

At  half-past  nine,  the  shovel  having  been 
dumped  on  the  wharf,  much  to  the  relief  of  the 
crew,  the  Concho  churned  her  way  backwards 
into  Key  West  Harbour.  As  she  turned  slowly 
around,  swinging  her  nose  towards  the  Straits 

[351] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

of  Florida,  we  saw  Cayo  Hueso  for  the  first 
time,  the  mysterious,  turtle-backed  island  where 
the  Spanish  sailors  and  explorers  found  nothing 
but  human  bones — the  Key  West  of  to-day.  It 
rose  out  of  the  smiting  green  of  the  shallow 
water  like  a  tropical  mirage,  veiled  in  hot  mists, 
linked  to  America  by  the  far-flung  viaduct  and 
still  as  remote  and  strange  as  only  a  city  in  the 
sea  can  be. 

We  passed  the  destroyer  No.  20  and  a  big 
South  American  tramp  on  their  wa}  into  the 
harbour.  Small  fishing  schooners  and  launches 
bobbed  in  our  wake.  At  noon,  Key  West  had 
dropped  behind  the  horizon.  We  followed  the 
Keys  northward  until  sunset.  And  that  night, 
as  we  lounged  in  our  deck  chairs  after  dinner, 
we  saw  the  diamond  strung  lights  of  Palm 
Beach. 


[352] 


CHAPTER  XIV 

WIND,  WAVES  AND  HOME  AGAIN 


E  had  taken  aboard  a  handful  of  pas- 
sengers at  Key  West — some  sea  cap- 
tains, the  crew  of  a  wrecked  schooner, 
a  tourist  or  two  and  a  trio  of  gam- 
blers. The  gamblers  sat  like  poisonous  spiders 
in  the  smoke-room  and  lured  first  one  and  then 
another  of  the  male  passengers  of  the  Concho  in- 
to a  losing  game  of  cards.  They  all  played  and 
they  all  lost.    And  they  all  played  again! 

The  captain  of  the  wrecked  schooner,  a  little 
wisp  of  a  man,  went  on  ridding  himself  of  his 
worldly  goods  at  the  rate  of  fifteen  dollars  a 
game  until  the  sleek  gamblers  had  emptied  the 
pockets  of  his  decent  blue  serge  clothes.  The 
Swedish  first  mate,  who  had  been  twice  "tor- 
pedoed" in  the  English  Channel  and  who  should 
have  developed  a  bump  of  caution,  was  drawn 
to  the  smoke-room  irresistibly.  My  chair  was 
near  the  door  and  when  I  turned  my  head  I 
could  see  the  three  sinister  profiles  of  the  nro- 

[353] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

fessional  card  players,  pallid  as  Monte  Carlo 
croupiers — one  wearing  the  traditional  spade 
beard,  the  other  two  smooth  and  shaven.  And  I 
saw  the  victims  pass,  one  by  one,  into  the  flood 
of  light  that  fell  from  the  smoke-room  door 
across  the  deck;  I  saw  them  pivot  there,  balance, 
and  finally  go  in.  Then,  with  their  hats  pushed 
back  and  their  brows  wrinkled  and  their  eyes 
full  of  doubt  and  rage  they  played  the  gamblers' 
"simple  little  game1'  and  lost  and  lost  and  lost. 

Once  I  spoke  to  the  Swedish  first  mate  about 
it  from  the  security  of  my  deck  chair.  I  had 
seen  so  many  men  swallowed  up  by  the  smoke- 
room  door  that  I  thought  I  would  try  to  probe 
the  reason. 

"They're  gamblers,"  I  remarked,  as  the  first 
mate  hesitated  there,  "aren't  they?" 

"I  know,  m'am,"  he  answered,  taking  a  puff 
at  his  cigarette  and  then  throwing  it  over  the 
rail,  a  little  comet-flash  of  fire  against  the  dark- 
ness of  the  sea,  "I  know,  ma'am,  but  I  hate  to  let 
men  like  them  get  the  best  of  me.  Crooks,  all 
three  of  'em." 

"Of  course." 

He  hesitated  a  moment  longer.  "I'll  tell  you 
what,"  he  volunteered.  "They  got  all  I  earned 
comin'  from  Tilbury  to  Key  West — every  penny 
of  it." 

[354] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

"And  you  are  going  to  play  again?" 

"Well,  you  see,  ma'am,  I  hate  to  let  men  like 
them  get  the  best  of  me." 

"They  always  do,  don't  they?  You're  no 
match  for  them.  They  travel  between  New 
York  and  Havana,  following  tourist  dollars. 
You  are  small  pickings  for  them,  if  you  will 
pardon  me.  The  money  you  risked  your  life  to 
earn  will  no  more  than  pay  their  passage  from 
Key  West  to  New  York." 

The  first  mate  grinned.  "Risked  my  life?" 
he  repeated  softly.  "I  should  say!  Twice  I've 
started  out  from  England  in  a  ten  thousand  ton 
ship  and  have  had  it  blown  from  under  me." 
He  whistled  a  long,  slow  whistle.  "Yes,  m'am! 
You  might  call  it  a  risk." 

"I  suppose  you  are  going  back  again?" 

"From  New  York." 

"Aren't  you  afraid?" 

He  shook  his  head.  "They  say  in  English, 
'three  times  and  out.'    No,  I'm  not  afraid." 

He  glanced  in  through  the  open  door  of  the 
smoke-room.  The  three  gamblers  sat  knee  to 
knee,  offering  a  "simple  little  game"  to  any  one 
who  cared  to  play.  The  first  mate  tipped  his 
hat  to  me. 

"Well,"  he  said  jauntily,  "I  guess  I'll  go  in." 

The  wisp  of  a  sea  captain  had  followed  him, 

[355] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

but  since  his  pockets  were  empty  he  stopped  in 
the  band  of  light,  rocked  on  the  toes  and  heels  of 
his  creaking  black  shoes  and  gazed  longingly 
after  the  bold  first  mate. 

"Are  you  going  to  play?"  I  asked. 

The  wisp  of  a  captain  spun  around  to  stare 
at  me.  "Me?"  he  demanded,  in  a  startled  whis- 
per. "I  borrowed  fifty  dollars  in  Key  West  and 
they  got  that  inside  of  two  minutes  last  night. 
No,  I'm  not  goin'  to  play,  m'am.  But  I'll  tell 
you — if  I  had  five  hundred  dollars  I'd  bust  that 
combination." 

"Oh,"  I  said,  pretending  innocence,  "do  you 
think  they're  gamblers?" 

"I  know  it,"  thundered  the  captain,  spitting 
violently  over  the  rail. 

"Why  don't  you  tell  Captain  Mcintosh?" 

"Can't  catch  'em.  No  one  could.  They're 
eels,  not  men.  They  got  my  fifty  dollars  quick 
as  that,  and  everything  as  easy  and  nice  and 
honest."  He  shook  his  head.  "I'd  ought  to  have 
learned  better,  but  I  never  seem  to.  I  like  a 
game.  Always  playing  games  one  way  or  an- 
other.    My  schooner " 

"Your  schooner?  What  about  her?  Some 
one  said  you  lost  her." 

The  captain  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  Allan's 
steamer  chair  (Allan,  of  course,  had  been  in  the 

[356] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

smoke-room  for  an  hour)  and  fixed  me  with  his 
weak,  watery  blue  eyes,  eyes  full  of  vague 
dreams  and  gentle,  ineffectual  longings,  the  eyes 
of  a  lovable  failure.  "I'll  tell  you  about  my 
schooner.  I  called  her  the  Charles  Perkins 
after  my  father.  He  was  a  captain,  too,  and  took 
his  ship  from  Maine  to  the  Azores  back  in  1838. 
He  was  a  man  of  his  word,  my  father,  and  my 
schooner  took  after  him,  never  failed  me,  never 
played  me  a  dirty  trick — as  trustworthy  a  ship 
as  ever  you  saw.  But  all  of  us  gets  old,  and 
the  Charles  Perkins  got  old,  too.  Old  and  tired, 
like  a  human  being.  You  remember  the  storm, 
two  weeks  ago?" 

"Yes.    We  were  in  Pensacola." 
"I  was  off  Tortugas,  in  the  Gulf,  beating  in 
to  Key  West.     Middle  of  the  night,  cold,  big 
seas.    You  remember?" 
I  said  I  did. 

The  captain  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "The 
Charles  Perkins/'  he  said,  "took  it  into  her  head 
that  she  wasn't  going  a  step  further.  Yes,  m'am, 
and  she'd  never  failed  me  before.  Sprung  a  leak 
and  began  to  go  down  by  the  bow.  I  can't  tell 
you  how  surprised  I  was.  I  couldn't  see  my 
hand  before  my  face  and  I  couldn't  hear  a  word 
I  said,  but  I  shouted  at  her  that  I  deserved 
something  better  than  drowning  like  a  rat  in 

[357] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  'You're  a  Perkins/  I  says 
to  her,  'and  a  Perkins  keeps  his  word.  A 
Perkins  is  a  good  friend.  You  stay  afloat  until 
morning.  Going  back  on  me  like  this!'  The 
crew  thought  I  was  crazy,  but  the  old  Charles 
Perkins  heard  and  she  understood.  She  floated 
all  night,  sunk  up  to  her  neck  in  the  seas  and 
wallowing  like  a  cow  in  a  ditch.  Floated,  with 
a  hole  in  her  as  big  as  a  church  door.  What 
d'you  think  of  that?" 

"I  think  she  was  a  good  sort." 

"She  was.  At  dawn,  just  as  the  wind  calmed 
down  a  little  and  a  big  tramp  eased  up  over  the 
horizon,  she  took  one  long  look  at  me,  sighed 
deep  down  in  herself  and  sank  like  a  stone." 

The  captain  got  up,  went  to  the  rail,  gazed 
down  into  the  black  water  a  moment  and  then 
came  hurriedly  back.  "Like  a  stone,"  he  re- 
peated.   "What  do  you  think  of  that?" 

And  before  I  could  answer  he  rushed  along 
the  deck,  hiding  his  tears  behind  a  huge  red 
handkerchief. 

There  were  many  such  stories.  The  guards- 
men on  the  forward  deck  had  tales  of  the  throb- 
bing nights  along  the  border  and  of  blazing 
days  between  the  parched  desert  and  the  wither- 
ing sky.  The  English  first  officer  and  the  smil- 
ing, red-cheeked  German  mate,  and  the  hatchet- 

[358] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

faced  watchman  all  had  stories.     The  captain 
was  a  treasure  house  of  yarns,  and  the  Charles 
Perkins  shabby  crew  could  have  supplied  Con- 
rad with  themes  to  last  another  magnificent  life- 
time.   There  was  a  scarlet-headed  Irishman  with 
a  Jewish  nose  and  a  mouth  full  of  dazzling  gold 
teeth    who    developed,    upon    acquaintance,    a 
whimsical  fancy  and  a  vast  knowledge  of  men. 
He  sold  furs  in  the  far  South  and  had  naturally 
acquired  a  broad  and  unending  optimism.  There 
was  a  musical  New  Englander  who  played  "Still 
Wie  Die  Nacht"  from  morning  to  night  and 
brought  floods   of   tears   from   the   lachrymose 
pastry  cook.    There  was  a  little  old  man  in  the 
black  alpaca  jacket  who  "took  his  vacation"  on 
the  Concho  every  year  and  improved  the  shin- 
ing hours  by  gilding  the  railings  and  pillars  and 
carved  ornamentations  of  the  dining  saloon.    A 
perfect  frenzy  of  gilding  seized  him  as  we  ap- 
proached New  York.     A  daredevil  negro  was 
sent  aloft  to  unscrew  the  big  gold  balls  that 
tipped  the  ship's  masts  and  to  lower  them  to  the 
deck    for    the    little    old    man's    ministrations. 
Every  one  stood  on  the  forward  deck  and  craned 
their  necks  and  stared  into  the  face  of  the  blaz- 
ing sky  at  the  climbing  negro  who  curled  his 
legs  around  the  mast  and  lifted  himself  inch  by 
inch  toward  his  goal.    And  the  captain,  with  his 

[359] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

cigar  turned  upward  at  the  extreme  angle  of  an 
anti-aircraft  gun,  warned  me  to  stand  well  out 
of  the  way.    "If  he  should  fall,  you  know " 

Oh,  there  was  no  end  of  excitement.  The  fire- 
men became  incendiary  (small  wonder!)  and 
fought  like  demons  in  the  boiler  room;  the 
Mexicans  caught  the  fever  and  attacked,  not 
their  enemies  the  guardsmen,  but  one  another. 
A  miniature  German-Mexican  war  raged  below 
decks,  and  while  I  cowered  in  delicious  fright  in 
my  steamer  chair,  expecting  almost  anything,  a 
fire-eating  Kain-tuckian  who  had  the  next  chair 
produced  a  six-shooter,  juggled  it  carelessly  and 
told  me  to  "never  you  mind.  I  could  pick  oft 
the  whole  crew  of  'em,  m'am.  Just  you  sit 
quiet." 

I  sat  quiet,  hoping  that  the  howling  Mexicans 
would  disrupt  onto  the  main  deck  and  that  I 
would  see  the  little  Kain-tuckian  in  action.  He 
rested  the  six-shooter  on  the  arm  of  his  chair 
and  talked  about  the  price  of  eggs.  That,  I  sup- 
pose, was  calculated  to  quiet  me,  but  afterwards, 
when  the  Mexicans  had  been  restored  to  peace 
and  had  kissed  each  other  tenderly,  the  disap- 
pointed Kain-tuckian  told  me  wonderful  stories 
of  his  bloodthirsty  youth.  He  had  taken  part  in 
countless  battles  with  moonshiners  and  outlaws 
— he  had  been  wounded,  he  had  killed,  he  had 

[360] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

had  hairbreadth  escapes  from  unspeakable 
dangers.  He  was  the  living  embodiment  of  a 
Richard  Harding  Davis  hero — Captain  Mack- 
lin  at  fifty.  And  how  he  could  talk!  Life — 
romantic,  delectable,  impossible  life — rolled  off 
the  tip  of  his  tongue  like  honey.  He  was  the 
legendary  adventurer  with  the  gift  of  gab,  and 
from  morning  to  night  the  glorious  impossibili- 
ties were  spun  for  my  delectation.  I  could  not 
keep  the  discovery  to  myself;  it  was  all  super 
"copy,"  but  since  Allan  does  not  write  stories 
I  allowed  him  to  share  the  Kain-tuckian's  yarns 
with  me. 

"Dare  I  write  them?"  I  asked  Allan  one 
morning  at  breakfast. 

"Write  what?" 

"Those  'moonshine'  tales — I  could  make  a  for- 
tune." 

"Some  one  else  has  already  made  that  par- 
ticular fortune,"  Allan  decided,  and  my  heart 
dropped  into  my  boots. 

"D'you  mean  that  they  are  old  stories?"  I 
gasped. 

"Old  as  the  Aztec  ruins,"  Allan  answered,  and 
winked  at  Captain  Mcintosh. 

Oh,  it  was  not  stupid,  this  coming  from 
Southern  seas  into  the  grey  waters  of  the  North! 
We  followed  the  Gulf  Stream  for  two  nights 

[361] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

and  two  days,  rushing  smoothly  forward  across 
the  patterned  water.  The  sky  was  a  beautiful 
pageant,  a  procession  of  immaculate  clouds  that 
rolled  from  horizon  to  horizon,  wrapped  in 
white  robes,  trailing  their  feet  in  the  sea  and 
thrusting  their  heads  into  a  glory  of  light. 
Clouds  of  flying  fish  sprayed  before  us,  dolphins 
and  white-breasted  gulls  followed  astern  and 
the  sea  was  deeply  blue,  black-blue  save  where 
the  crested  waves  turned  over  at  their  tips  and 
broke  in  a  spreading  fan  of  milky  foam.  The 
South  had  not  dropped  behind — we  were  linked 
to  it  by  the  endless  wake  left  by  the  hurrying 
Concho  across  the  brilliant  sea.  Sometimes  we 
saw  the  sandy  shores  of  Florida  and  long,  white 
beaches  fringed  with  tufted  palms.  Sometimes 
the  land  receded  and  the  limitless  sea  sur- 
rounded us.  Always  the  air  was  mild  and  in- 
finitely fragrant.  Ships  rose  above  the  horizon 
trailing  long  banners  of  oily  smoke,  crossed  our 
bow  and  passed,  going  down  to  the  Islands  or  to 
South  America.  Tide  rifts,  like  periscopes 
awash,  followed  us  as  long  as  we  stayed  in  the 
hot  Gulf  Stream.  Night  swarmed  with  blue 
stars  and  a  late  moon  climbed  into  the  sky  and 
flooded  the  world  with  phosphorescent  white- 
ness. 

Then  miraculously  the  world  grew  grey  and 

[362] 


OF  THE  SOUTH 

we  passed  out  of  the  brilliant  South  into  the 
colourless  North.  Gusts  of  wind  shook  the 
Concho,  the  seas  piled  up,  slate-grey,  furious, 
and  slapped  the  bow  resoundingly,  throwing 
clouds  of  icy  spray  across  the  decks.  The 
Mexicans  went  below  to  chatter  and  to  repent 
at  their  leisure.  The  drenched  ship  wallowed 
deeper  and  deeper,  the  scudding  clouds  shut  out 
the  world.  And  Allan  and  I,  wrapped  to  our 
blue  noses  in  great  coats  and  mufflers,  stared 
through  the  black  squalls  toward  New  York  and 
sighed — for  we  were  going  home  again  to 
snow,  ice,  bitter  winds,  routine,  work — and  we 
had  just  learned  how  to  play!  We  had  just 
learned  to  love  the  dreamy  and  romantic  South. 
The  Concho,  reeling  through  the  mountainous 
seas,  was  taking  us  to  reality.  One  by  one  the 
octopus  arms  of  the  great  city  reached  out  to 
draw  us  back  again.  Lightships,  heaving  drunk- 
enly,  and  a  great  tide  of  steamers  rushing  west 
and  south  across  our  path — New  York!  We 
sensed  it  before  the  flickering  lights  of  Asbury 
Park  warned  us  that  the  voyage  was  nearly  over. 
We  waited  until  the  Concho  has  passed  Sandy 
Hook  and  had  anchored  for  the  night  under  the 
outstretched  arm  of  flamboyant  Mother  Lib- 
erty. We  could  hear  the  city,  grumbling  and 
groaning  faintly.     We   could   see   the   myriad 

[363] 


OLD  SEAPORT  TOWNS 

lights  in  its  towers  and  pinnacles.  We  were 
apart  from  it,  still  mysteriously  caught  into  our 
brief  dream.  A  light  powder  of  snow  fell  gen- 
tly on  the  Concho's  decks  and  rimmed  the  spars 
and  rails  and  touched  our  cheeks  with  caressing 
fingers.  It  veiled  the  crowded  harbour  and 
vested  Madame  Liberty  in  white.  Ferry  boats 
passed  bearing  black  crowds 

"Home,"  we  said. 

Need  I  tell  you  that  we  sighed?  And  we  part 
from  you,  dear  Reader,  patient,  consoling,  for- 
giving Reader,  with  a  sigh.  For  we  were  leav- 
ing you  who  have  gone  with  us  on  our  long 
pilgrimage  and  we  were  leaving  the  splendid, 
the  magnificent  South.  Think  of  us  leaning  on 
the  Concho's  rail,  shrouded  in  the  gentle  snow, 
with  our  eyes  on  New  York  and  a  sigh  for  the 
South  in  our  full  hearts. 


THE  END 


[364] 


